Kamen Rider Tarock Re-Dealt Mega War: The Devil's Nail
by starofjustice
Summary: Pulled off course on a routine visit to the Sphere, Liss finds herself part of a legendary army that has to save the world once again. Will she prove herself her predecessors' equal, or be overshadowed as the world's fate is decided?
1. Chapter 1

**This takes place after Ch. 33 of the main series, although like most of the movies this is based on, don't worry about it having a lot of bearing on the rest of the story. It'll be divided into a couple parts, though. Enjoy!**

* * *

Another building exploded in a cloud of fire and cement dust. Already scared out of their minds, throats hoarse from screaming in terror, people scattered in all directions only to see more of the inhuman shapes closing in from every street.

Above, a sinister figure held aloft by multiple dark wings watched in approval as his minions spread further and further across the city, terrorizing the people as they searched for the last few pieces of the sacred object that was the key to his plans.

Without warning he heard a cry from below. " **Henshin…V3!** " There was a burst of light on one street. He focused his vision and could see a man in green, wearing a red and white mask shaped like a dragonfly's face and punching and kicking his way through the monstrous creatures lining the streets.

Ah, so the first of them had shown himself. It had only been a matter of time, the dark man supposed, just as it was only a matter of time before the rest of them followed suit. Their stubbornness was almost admirable, in its way. He idly wondered if it was his persistence or _theirs_ that kept drawing him back in one form after another.

Still, it didn't matter. Let them come one at a time or as a united front, he thought. Power beyond measure would soon be his, and his forces were already as numerous as mankind's sins.

 **Kamen Rider Tarock Re-Dealt Mega War – The Devil's Nail**

* * *

Liss Decker finished packing a few cans of spam and beef broth into her bike's saddlebags. A lot had happened at home, and while she was proud that her older sister thought she didn't need anyone to hold her up anymore, getting back to the Sphere for a little while to clear her head seemed like a good idea. Besides, there was that little army Avalon was developing she really needed to check in on, and see how they felt about having her finally fight at their side.

Plus, she chuckled to herself, she didn't need to stick around to see the rest of Sensei's rage at finding out his daughter was changing her name to be more like Liss.

She gunned the motor and started rolling down the street, going faster and faster until she felt herself breaking through the wall between her world and the Sphere. There was the usual bang as she left the town behind, followed by echoes vanishing into the distance.

But she was immediately thrown back in her seat by a wave of force and almost blinded by a burst of colored stars. Red, orange and blue danced in front of her eyes. Walls of green and purple streaked past her and into the darkness, making Liss's head swim.

Her bike shook violently as she sailed through something she'd never seen when she passed through the void between the two worlds. Another blinding burst of color came, brighter than the last one, and Liss fought down an urge to shield her eyes with her arm. If she fell off Shift Runner before she landed, she was sure she'd be annihilated by whatever was going on.

"Humanity's fate is sealed," she heard a despondent female voice wail suddenly, the word echoing into the distance. "The world ends tonight…" "They fight again and again but there's always another enemy…" "Eventually even they have to break!"

The tormented whispering got louder and louder and the colors brighter and flying faster and faster past her eyes. She was sure after another few seconds she was going to lose her mind, when without warning the wheels of her bike crashed into something solid and sent her tumbling from her seat onto hot asphalt.

Liss heard screams and she thought for a second the voices had given up subtlety, but as her vision started to clear she could make out her surroundings, and realized she was next to the smoking remains of a building. A panicked family was running down the street her way with a pair of monsters on the tail. The first was some grey-skinned thing with mottled red armor plating on its chest with a pincer in place of one hand and mandibles coming off its face. The second was green with black striping over his chest and arms, an insect-like face with huge hateful red eyes and a long blade-like hand that reminded her of a praying mantis's.

As the family passed her, almost to Liss's surprise the parents grabbed her arms and tried to drag her away. "Hurry!" the mother screamed. "Hurry and run or you'll die!"

She squawked in surprised and was hauled a few steps back but shrugged out of their grip. Liss didn't know what the hell was going on, but wasn't she supposed to be well-known? The mother shrank back a step when she spotted the orb of dull crystal in Liss's eye socket.

But it was then she noticed the casts of their faces, and the lettering on all the signs up and down the street.

This wasn't the Sphere, and it sure as hell wasn't her town. She was somewhere in Japan. And the two monsters who'd split up and were circling around to box her in didn't look like any Mythos she'd ever seen.

That didn't mean she couldn't handle this just as easily.

" **Wands Suit!** " her new Arc Driver announced as it scanned her card and her familiar thin blue armor formed over her body, transforming Liss Decker into Kamen Rider Tarock once again. The red and grey monster jumped for her, pincer extended. But behind her mask, Tarock smirked.

" **Mag Step** ," she whispered and zoomed out of the way, nothing but a blue and black blur. The monster landed, surprised, only for Tarock to come up behind, kicking him a hundred times in one second. Pieces of his body cracked off and went flying into the air leaving just a pile of junk, with wires for veins and steel tubing for bones peeking out of the ends. No, that was no Mythos.

"A Kamen Rider!" the family's son exclaimed, grinning. "A brand new one!"

"Get out of here, you guys!" Tarock called over her shoulder, not even registering for a second that she'd understood what he said even though she didn't know the first thing about foreign languages. She turned back around to see the mantis monster slinging the chain of a kusarigama so it curled around her wrist. He yanked her toward him and sliced at her with the blade on his hand, but she ducked underneath. A flurry of blindingly fast punches slammed into his shoulders.

The mantis staggered away, sparks spewing from the hole she'd punched in his body. Tarock charged him at high speed to finish the job. He whirled to face her, and for a second she thought she saw fear in his hideous inhuman eyes.

Then a cracking sound split the air and something slashed across her knees. Tarock cried out in surprise and her momentum carried her into a painful roll across the ground.

She looked up into the face of another monster, this one green with a yellow face and stomach covered with red veins, his body reminding her of the consistency of a plant stem, and clusters of tiny roots in place of feet. Instead of one hand was a long barbed vine flecked with red.

Her blood.

Suddenly the plant monster charged her, the roots in its feet entangling themselves in the ground with every step and pulling loose again, leaving a trail of cracks and pits in his wake. Tarock jumped to her feet, battered legs shaking for a second. She threw a punch at the plant monster but her fist only rebounded off his leathery body.

Then he tackled Tarock, wrapping his vine around both of them. The spines dug into her thin armor and his flesh alike, but he hardly seemed to notice as they slammed into the ground…and it gave way underneath them. They twisted over and over as they fell into darkness, the spikes on the monster's vine digging into Tarock's body as she tried to struggle free. Finally they landed on something soft and springy that spread out like a gauzy net underneath them. A giant spider's web. And crawling along it in their direction was another monster, this one with a dark green body, a furry black head with menacing red eyes and a web-like cape hanging from its gaunt shoulders.

The spider. Of course.

The mantis monster she'd left behind dropped onto the other side of the web. Then another two monsters stepped out of the shoulders, one with a distinctly feminine form, her long hair a poisonous-looking purple and the rest of her body a dark blue. That is, except for the yellow and black spirals covering her breasts…

The other new monster was something Tarock could hardly begin to describe. It was covered in green and yellow scales, with a head the shape of a melon and a mouth full of jagged teeth. Under its arms were wide yellow wings. All of them started closing in as the barbed vine coiled tighter around her, but Tarock fought down an urge to scream. Instead she gathered her strength. She was Kamen Rider Tarock. She could get out of this.

She called up her speed, and the area around them seemed to turn a dark blue and the monsters slowed until they were almost standing still. Then Tarock started to hammer her fists against the chest of the plant monster, which only made the thorns embedded in her arms shake and dig in her flesh. She yelled out in rage and punched faster, with all of this form's incredible speed to make up for its pitiful lack of strength. The thorns dug into her but her fists started to glow with heat as she punched so fast her hands turned into red and black blurs, and finally she could feel the monster's bear hug on her starting to weaken, painfully dragging the needles out of her skin.

Tarock folded her legs up and got her feet between herself and the monster, then let out a yell and **shoved**. The needles were yanked out of her skin and she yelled in pain but rolled away from the plant monster and landed on her feet. She waved a shaky hand in front of her Arc Driver and her wand formed in her fingers even as ribbons of red flowed down over her gauntlet. The head burst into blue flame and she turned to the spider monster just as he sprayed a blanket of web at her from his mouth, but her swing burnt it away and before the spider realized what was happening Tarock extended the wand into its staff form and knocked the spider spinning into the darkness.

"Get her, Geba Condor!" one of the other monsters yelled. The fang-toothed lizard creature spread his yellow wings and launched himself at Tarock. She stabbed with her staff at his face and then gasped in surprise as he suddenly disappeared, then reappeared above her weapon and crashed into her. Tarock shoved the tip of her staff against the web and braced herself so the monster failed to knock her down.

" **Trump!** " said her new Arc Driver, and the head of her staff flashed and transformed through a new, refined power, forming an arc shaped like bearded men in robes holding their arms above them at the top. Inside the arc a ball of blue fire it hurt Tarock to look at formed at the tip of her weapon as she swung it at the yellow-winged monster. " **Cataclysm! Devils Smite!** " Immediately a wave of blue fire jumped from the tip of Tarock's staff. As it flew up it formed into a horde of grinning, fang-toothed demons made completely of fire. They screamed with glee as they split up, one crashing into Geba Condor and destroying both of them in a blue blast. The bee woman shrieked in terror as one spiraled through the air behind her, and then she suddenly charged Tarock, seemingly determined to take Tarock with her if she was already doomed. A rapier flashed in the monster-woman's hand at Tarock's throat but she batted it aside with her staff but the bee woman was fast and the sharp tip struck through her thin blue armor over and over. Ignoring the pain of her countless injuries Tarock let out a yellow and swung her staff like a baseball bat, knocking the bee woman into the fiery demon who'd been behind her the whole time, and in a blast of fire both were obliterated.

The cackling demons streaked through the air after the other monsters who just a minute ago had Tarock surrounded. The mantis monster made a terrific jump and tried to climb back up to the street but was incinerated as he clawed his way up the wall. The plant monster tried to make a last stand, whipping his vine-hand at the fiery demon closing in on him. As it touched flames raced down its arm burning it to a cinder before engulfing the plant monster himself completely. The horde of demons gathered together in midair and let out one last shrieking, victorious cackle before exploding into puffs of fire.

But Tarock didn't relax. There was one monster they hadn't caught, and by focusing she was sure she hear the spider scuttling in the shadows. Her weapon faded from her hand and she started looking back and forth desperately, clutching the wounds on her arms and whispering fearfully to herself. It wasn't her most refined trick to get someone to underestimate her, but without knowing the opposition better…

"Spider Man…Where are you coming from, Spider Man…?" she murmured.

Suddenly she spotted a streak of movement out of the corner of one eye. Webbed cape flapping behind him, the spider monster was flying through the air at her. He spewed a giant net of web but as he came down the card ejected from Tarock's Arc Driver and she slammed another one in. " **Pentacles Suit!** " it called and her thick dark green armor garbed her body and the familiar sensation of unstoppable strength filled her arms. She reached out to grab the sheet of web before it could wrap around her and tore it to bits before the surprised spider's giant eyes. " **Dire Fate! Earthsplitter Kick!** " the Arc Driver said next as Tarock went into a high spinning kick with one foot still on the ground, slamming her glowing foot into the spider's midriff with a horrific *CRACK*. The spider's body splintered away from where her foot connected, then his two halves dropped onto the web beneath them and exploded into flames.

Tarock jumped for the wall as the flames spread across the web and burnt it to nothing. Her powerful fists punched handholds in the rock and in another minute she was back on the street. This had been an insane morning, she already had new scars to show for it, and she had a feeling things were just getting started.

* * *

When Tarock scrambled back onto the street she half-expected, half-hoped to find herself on the streets of her hometown, or at least a city on the Sphere where she'd been before and she'd seen the people and the monsters already.

Instead there were still explosions ripping the sky and a trio of monsters passed down the street in the distance. Both were covered in green scales, but the first had the bulbous eyes and short horns of a chameleon while the one trailing behind him had long fangs and a hood like a cobra. Showing up behind them was a yellow and black lizard creature with giant googly eyes walking behind them on two legs that Tarock couldn't even begin to identify. These ones had company besides each other, though. Around them were a gang on men in weird black unitards and ski masks, decorated only with a ribcage design on their chests and huge belt buckles depicting a skeletal bird.

One of them turned and spotted Tarock, and let out a piercing cry: "EEEEEE!" The trio of reptile monsters whipped around to face her and she went into a stance. As they rushed down the street at her, surrounded by their masked minions, a weird robotic voice suddenly cut through all the noise.

" **Launcher On.** "

A barrage of missiles screamed out from behind Tarock and slammed into the bat group of attackers. A fiery explosion engulfed them that only the cobra monster stepped out of, somehow looking pissed off even with such an immobile face. The rest of his little group had been blown to bits.

Tarock turned around to see where the missiles had come from and groaned as she spotted another figure, but he didn't look much like the ones she'd been fighting up to then. He had on a white and gray suit with orange stripes up down his chest and legs, matching the lenses over the eyes of his missile-shaped mask. Attached to his right ankle was a blue cuff with a rectangular box on it that went up to his knee, full of empty bays for the missiles that had just shot down the monsters.

"Another one?!" the cobra man cursed.

The newcomer pointed an accusing finger at him. "We Kamen Riders won't let you END-Shocker soldiers have what you want! Let's settle this one-on-one!" he righteously declared.

The cobra monster brandished one hand and spewed a blast of flame at the newcomer who calmly inserted a tiny green device into a compartment on his belt, which spoke in that same robotic voice as before, " **Winch On**." A green box appeared on his arm and a hook on a steel cable launched from the end and tied around the cobra. He slid an orange device into another compartment. " **Rocket On,** " the belt said before a huge orange rocket did indeed appear over his other arm. It roared to life and took him into the air, dragging the cobra with him.

Tarock stared after them for a minute as the white-armored man flew out of sight behind a building dragging the fire-breathing cobra behind him. That had been a Kamen Rider, hadn't it? One of the local ones. One of the _real_ ones, she supposed. She'd beaten down a bunch of monsters since landing in the middle of whatever was going on, but he'd taken out that new group like they were nothing.

She was starting to be hailed as the hero of a new age, but was she _that_ far behind these guys?

"Kaaaaaameeeeennnnnn Riiiiiiiiiiiiiderrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" an angry voice hissed. Tarock turned, and saw yet another monster step into view from behind the edge of a blackened building. It was a dark green lizard man with a long, sloping neck and a tail that would've crushed cinderblocks. Down his back was a row of sharp spines that could've sliced off Tarock's finger with ease, but clutched in his scaly hands was a bright red ball covered in weird, menacing studs.

Then he dropped it suddenly and kicked it in Tarock's direction with a sound like a thunderclap. It flew over her head and landed a few feet behind her.

The next thing Tarock knew she'd been deafened by the roar of an explosion and had been blasted eighty feet into the air and crashed at horrific speed through a concrete wall.

She landed in an abandoned office space, but immediately grabbed the edge of a desk and struggled to her feet. Something told Tarock the lizard monster knew she hadn't been finished off by that bomb and needed to get the hell out of where she'd landed. She still didn't hear the breaking glass but saw another one of those studded bombs crashing through a window and dove through one in the opposite wall and fell two floors before she landed on her face.

Laying on her back she saw a puff of fire erupt from the floor she'd just been in, but a second later there was a silent roar and the two floors above it started to slide off the rest of the building. Tarock scrambled frantically to her feet and ran for all she was worth as an avalanche of concrete and glass thundered down behind her and pelted her with pieces of junk. One huge rock caught her between the shoulders and knocked her sprawling again.

Her hearing was starting to come back as Tarock got to her armored feet, the sound of the concrete chunks crashing and crumbling behind her. But it was a reptilian hiss that seized her attention as the lizard monster stepped into sight from between two devastated buildings, carrying another one of his studded bombs. He started to drop it…

…and Tarock decided she'd had enough of monsters she knew nothing about trying to kill her. She concentrated on summoning her weapon, the hammer called the Gran Crusher, but her Arc Driver seemed to intercept the thought and reroute it. " **Trump!** " it said in a flash of green light a massive gauntlet formed on her left hand, yanking straight down from the sudden weight. Inscribed on the knuckles were small silver pentacles while a golden star was set into the forearm and humming with power.

" **Calamity! Temblor Punch!** " The lizard monster's projectile arced through the air but even though she was in her slowest form, everything seemed to move in slow motion as Tarock brought back her arm and smashed her fist into the incoming bomb with a noise like an earthquake. A huge recoil ripped through her body and cracked the ground around her feet, windows and walls collapsing for fifty feet in every direction.

The ball bounced back at the lizard monster but erupted into flames from the power of Tarock's punch as it did. The lizard monster only had a second to lash his tongue in surprise and anger before the ball landed at his feet and exploded in a fireball fifty feet high.

Behind her she heard that weird robotic voice again. " **Fire On.** " The Kamen Rider she'd seen a minute ago came into view dodging fireballs spewed by the cobra monster's hand and the swooping attacks of a bat monster who'd joined in the fight. His armor flashed and turned bright red, and a rifle with a wide nozzle at the end appeared in his hands. He squeezed the trigger and a stream of fire sprayed from the end, meeting with the cobra monster's next blast and creating an explosion in the middle that did no damage to either of them. The Rider plucked something off one of the slots on his belt and inserted it into the bottom of his gun and took aim.

" **Rider Explosive Shoot!** " the Rider said and pulled the trigger. A roaring jet of flame erupted from his gun and engulfed the cobra and bat monsters. When the fire cleared a second later there was nothing left of them but scorch marks on the pavement.

* * *

"Not bad," Tarock murmured. The other Rider whipped around to face her and for a second she found herself worried about being on the business end of his weapon.

Instead he swooped his hand up the forehead of his mask. "It was pretty good, huh? But it was nothing compared to you hitting that bomb back…it looked so easy!" He flipped switches on his belt and his armor faded away, leaving a lanky man with a shiny pompadour hairstyle and wearing a grey suit. But what most struck Tarock was he was looking at her with the brightest grin on his face she thought she'd ever seen.

She let her Pentacles Card eject from her belt and into her waiting hand and with it her armor faded away too. Dried blood had already seeped into the sleeves of her duster where the plant monster had impaled her arms. She flexed her arms and grimaced, but the pain wasn't that bad. A good thing, too, with how it seemed like this was only the beginning.

"An American Kamen Rider? And a girl?! That's so awesome!" the man gushed, his grin widening even more.

"Thanks, I guess. Who are you?"

He pointed one finger at her. "I'm the one who will befriend all the Kamen Riders! Even the ones in different countries, it looks like!" He paused for effect and looked her in the eye, but he couldn't keep up the try at a cool façade and grinned again. "Kisaragi…Gentaro!" he identified himself.

"Hi," Liss said, not really sure how to reply to such an announcement. "I'm Liss. Liss Decker."

"Lisa?" Gentaro beamed. "That's such a pretty name!"

"It's not 'Lisa'!" Liss protested, but she was cut off by a huge object flying overhead, looking like a brass chandelier crossed with an angry, snapping dragon.

Gentaro's grin faded. "Sabbats…Let's go, Lisa!" He ran behind a building to a white motorcycle with fairing shaped like the nosecone of a space shuttle and a tail shaped like the rear fins. Liss climbed onto Shift Runner and pulled up alongside him as he sped away down a deserted road.

"Where are we going?!" Liss called to her new ally.

"Hongou-san's calling all the Riders to a meeting to stop what's going on!" Gentaro answered. "He told us all to get the ones who were still fighting and bring them back to plan our attack! It's a good thing you came right now, we're going to need all the help we can get!"

"I didn't exactly come on purpose," Liss mumbled, and Gentaro obviously didn't hear her over the sound of their bikes. But if she'd landed right in the middle of a crisis, then somebody probably had a good reason for making sure she did, right?

She didn't notice the faint wisp of rainbow-colored light trailing behind them as they rode.

* * *

Eventually they stopped outside of a wide building with a pair of smoke stacks at one end and broken windows on every side. It looked like it might've once been a factory, but that had been a long time ago. Out behind it was an empty lot where some forty or fifty outlandish motorcycles were parked, and they left theirs in that area before going inside.

Now it served a slightly more noble purpose, as Liss saw once they were inside. There outlines of countless people standing around the edges of the main room and a metal catwalk a few feet above their heads. Gentaro climbed up that same catwalk and took Liss with him to an empty spot by the railing. Standing in the center of the room below was an aged Japanese man, his features worn and craggy, his expression stern, but as he looked up at the new arrivals their eyes met for a just a second Liss found herself forgetting to take her next breath. Aged he might be, but there was an intensity in his gaze that dwarfed even her old sensei's. It was like he was staring at her straight down to her thought she'd seen some things since accepting her powers, but the man down there…he had the eyes of a man who'd seen everything.

He lowered his eyes again to someone on the floor. "Ichimonji…does anyone know where Kadoya is?" he asked in a booming voice.

"You know him," said another voice, chuckling with light amusement. "Only showing up when it suits him. I think everyone's here that's going to be, Hongou."

"All right," said the first man, evidently Hongou, and then spoke up to address the entire room. "Thank you all for answering our summons. I'm sure you'd all rather be out there fighting END-Shocker, but we've been watching them, and we think there's something specific they're after." A light came on above him showing a map on the floor of what Liss could only assume was the city they were in. At twelve points across it were drawn red circles. "END-Shocker Kaijin activity is especially thick in these areas. We're going to break into squads, infiltrate these areas and find out what they're looking for.

"The first group will be overseen by V3 and Stronger, and will consist of Wizard, OOO, Garren and Leangle, Snipe, Meteor, Raia…" Hongou went on, rattling off a short list of names that meant nothing to Liss. Then he spoke up again, "Second group will be overseen by X and Amazon, and will consist of Gills, Specter, Drive and Chase, Guridon…"

A light groan went up through the assembled crowd, and Liss looked over to see a light frown on Gentaro's face. "What's wrong?" she asked him in a whisper.

"Hongou's putting all the veteran Riders in charge," Gentaro answered. "It sounds like the rest of us are just soldiers to him…"

"Third group will be overseen by Black and Skyrider, and will consist of Ghost, Ryugen, W, Drake, Showa, and Fourze," Hongou announced next.

Gentaro stood up and waved his hand suddenly. "Hongou-san! I'd also like to take the new Rider I found with our group! Stand up, Lisa."

"My name's not Lisa," Liss protested, but couldn't work up any energy for it. She was pretty sure that after this, she was stuck with it.

Every eye was on her at once and Hongou grimaced and pointed in her direction, prompting someone to point one of the ceiling lamps on her. "Who are you? I've never seen you before," Hongou demanded.

"I've never _been_ here before," Liss replied. "I go by Tarock. Kamen Rider Tarock, I guess."

"How do we know she's not some kind of END-Shocker spy?" asked someone, a surly-looking youth in a white leather vest, with a strange yellow-faced creature in a black robe standing behind him waving his hands in a gesture to head off a confrontation.

"Because they tried to kill her!" Gentaro answered. "I saw it! Her powers are just like ours, and they're really strong!"

"Tch!" the vested youth said, obviously unimpressed, but Liss just looked away. At one point she would've gone over there and punched his face in for looking down on her, but that had been sometime before she'd lost her eye…shutting up jerks just didn't seem to matter anymore.

"It doesn't matter," Hongou cut in with a glower. "Right now we need all the help we can get. Those of you who've already been named, your squad leaders know where you're going. Get out there and find out what's going on. Fourth group will be overseen by Super-1. It will consist of…"

Liss didn't bother listening to the rest. She was following Gentaro back onto the ground and they joined a procession of others heading out back to the field of parked bikes. As they went Liss leaned and whispered to Gentaro, "Which one's Black?"

"Eh? Oh…that's him there," Gentaro replied, pointing to an older man dressed all in white, with a soft smile on his face that was calm and shrewd but showing some of the wear lines that covered Hongou's face. "Why do you ask, Lisa?"

"Because I know somebody who really respected him," Liss whispered back.

"Oh! That's great! Hey, Minami-san!" Gentaro called. "Lisa here wants to talk-"

But Liss clapped a hand over his mouth. "Do we have time for this?" she hissed.

"Ah," Gentaro nodded and smiled at her again. "Getting the job done first…you're a real pro, Lisa!"

Black/Minami climbed onto a sleek green bike with red headlights that reminded Liss uncomfortably of insect-like eyes. While she got onto Shift Runner, she thought on what Gentaro had said for a second, never really having thought of herself as a planner or someone dedicated to a great goal. That was how it was for these other Riders, though. Wasn't it? They were guys who devoted everything to saving the world from the powerful monsters that appeared again and again, trying to destroy it or mold it in their own image. Or so she'd been told by Sensei.

For the first real time, Liss wondered how she measured up in her fights against the Mythos. She'd said again and again that she'd been fighting to prove her own strength. That she _mattered_ despite how many people had seen her as nothing but a delinquent. She'd convinced some important people of that, she remembered. One of them had given their life to give her a new Form Card. How many of these guys had done something like that? A lot, probably, right? How many had done something even more incredible? And how many had never done anything like that, but saved the world anyway?

She still wondered as fired up Shift Runner and joined the procession of motorcycles splitting up into the streets.

* * *

After a long ride into the hills in silence, Minami signaled for his procession to pull over and sneak up on a large church at the bottom of a hill. It was surrounded by a congregation of monsters, with more flying in circles above it and a few scrambling back and forth across the roof, one even perched on the tip of the tall cross on one side.

"They're everywhere," observed one of the Riders, a young man with bright orange hair and wearing a black jacket covered with gaudy pinky flowers. "Look, why don't I go down there, get their attention and lead some of them away? I could escape the most easily—"

"No, Takeru," Minami cut him off.

"And why not?" asked another one, a dour-looking man wearing an ivy cap and who'd had a black rectangular case strapped to his bike on the way in. "You veterans think we're not as good as you because we don't have your 'years of experience' or something?"

"That's not it at all," Minami replied. "Hongou wants us to observe the risks—"

"Hey, why don't _I_ be a decoy?" Liss suggested. "I have super-speed. They'd never catch me, even without my bike."

Minami looked her up and down, and a weird self-conscious feeling came over Liss. It was Kamen Rider Black, the one her teacher had always talked about as the ultimate example of strength and bravery, and he was trying to figure out if she measured up. Liss had never really thought about actually meeting him, let alone having him pass judgement on her. "Well…" he started to say.

Then a triumphant cry went up from the doors to the church. A small group of monsters filed out. The first one was an ugly brown-furred creature with a skull-like face full of sharp teeth, clutching one arm that had been reduced to a stump by something inside. But as he came out he triumphantly held something above his head, a long piece of shiny red metal. Minami scowled as he saw it.

"What is it?" Takeru, the man in the gaudy jacket, asked.

"I have a feeling," Minami murmured, "but I hope I'm wrong."

"Watch out!" Gentaro warned and pointed upward. One of the flying monsters circling the church started flying their way. It was a hideous red bat creature with long fangs and furry yellow wings, looking like some kind of deformed flying squirrel. He shrieked a warning of its own to the other monsters as he spotted the Riders in their hiding place. There was an awful moment of silence as the monsters guarding the church stopped in place and registered what was happening, then as one they all seemed to scream and charge up to where the Riders were crouching, moving up at them like a wall of some kind of plague.

Minami immediately rose to his feet, clenched his fists to his right, then thrust his left arm out at full length and circled it above his head before swinging both arms back the other way. "Hen…SHIN!" he called out. As he did a belt fastened with a glittering red stone formed around his waist. For just a second his body took on the rough, jagged features of a man-sized grasshopper, then formed into sleek black armor, inscribed with red and yellow stripes around his neck, wrists and ankles. The red lenses in his mask flashed to life as he jumped high, somersaulting through the air with effortless ease smashing his foot into the back of the deformed flying squirrel right between the wings, knocking it into a crazed spin.

He vaulted off the flying squirrel's back and landed on the ground again. Rays of power erupted from behind him as he went into a stance and fearlessly announced, "Kamen Rider… **BLACK!** " For just a second the monster horde stopped in its tracks, and Liss and the other Riders wasted no more time in powering up.

" **Cups Suit!** "

" **Budou Arms!** "

" **CHANGE…DRAGONFLY.** "

" **Cyclone! Joker!** "

Clad in her yellow armor again, Tarock immediately called up her weapon. " **Trump!** " The armor over her left hand flashed and morphed into a box-like shape with rising tidal waves engraved onto the sides. But on the front was a foot-long needle-like blade, and she wasted no time in impaling into the chest of the first monster that charged her, a red-and-black thing with long spidery legs coming off its shoulders and the sides of its head almost like hair. It screamed and jerked in pain, and Tarock kicked it away…how many spider monsters were going to try to kill her today?

She jumped over its head and knocked down one behind it with a flying kick, but five clawed hands reached out and grabbed her by the arms and legs. The spider-like monster she'd just knocked away lunged for her neck but Tarock managed to bring up her left arm and leveled it at the monster…

" **Cataclysm! Shore Destructor!** " The long needle suddenly unfolded backward into a round, fan-like shape. Tarock grunted and focused all her attention on keeping it leveled at her attacker, as it suddenly seemed to become even heavier as it glowed with power that a second later exploded out with a roar. A giant burst of water surged from her weapon and blasted the monster away from her while shaking off the ones holding her back. The wave spread wider and wider, catching more and more of the attacking monster horde in it before suddenly shooting up like a geyser and catching a bunch of the flying monsters inside its current. Then it roared again, expanding outward into a massive whirlpool above their heads that flung the monsters it had trapped in all directions, the evil creatures screaming and disintegrating into dust.

Tarock sucked in a breath while she could, and saw how hard the rest of the Riders were fighting. One in green and brown flew down from the sky and buzzed through a crowd of monsters, knocking them all down before flying up again and coming down with a ferocious kick backed by gravity.

" **Let's Ride: Skyrider!** " There was a flash and suddenly another green-and-brown Rider was flying up next to the other and they both came down side by side, sending up a giant explosion that sent monsters flying.

Two of the other Riders, one in green and purple armor and the other with white and blue armor with a plate like an insect's wing across his chest, both wielded pistols and blasted any attacker that was about to attack the other Riders from behind. Gentaro had taken to the air again with that rocket on his arm and crashed into one monster with his shoulder and knocked it to the ground, and as he came down to finish it off he slipped a device into his belt that turned his armor gold and armed him with a baton that crackled with electricity.

Another's armor was split down the middle, green on his right and black on his left. He seemed to move like lightning dodging attacks and knocking monsters down with incredibly fast punches and kicks. One monster landed a lucky punch between his shoulders and he staggered forward into a group of waiting attackers, but he switched something in his belt and his green side turned red, allowing him to greet them with a fiery punch. The last member of their group had a white robe on over his suit and was hacking his way closer to Tarock with a long staff that seemed to have a small mechanical spider clutching the very end…what was it with spiders that day?

Black himself was locked in combat with a scaled monster with fish-like fins and a row of bone-like spines sticking up from the top of its head. He jumped and landed a glowing punch on its chest that knocked it flying to explode in midair. As soon as it did, he pointed over Tarock's shoulder. "There! He's escaping! Tarock, after him! We'll hold the rest of them!" he yelled.

She looked and saw the one-armed monster running off as the others kept Tarock and her new allies busy, clutching the red metal to his chest. As he ran he looked over his shoulder and spotted Tarock running after him, then squealed and spread his wings.

A bat. He was another bat monster.

Tarock turned and made the longest jump she could and then ran at top speed back to where she'd left Shift Runner. As soon as she touched the handlebars its powerful motor roared to life and its tires sprayed gravel as she drove after the bat at top speed.

What could he have found that made leaving the other Riders behind worth it to stop him, she asked herself. And how did Black already know…?

 _To be continued…_

* * *

 **Well, here we are. I'm trying to have Liss play off some of the official Riders and see how it goes, not dominating the spotlight as much as having her interact with them and learn a thing or two if I can help it.**

 **For the curious the monsters from the first fight were…the first batch of monsters from the original Kamen Rider show, Spider Man through Tokageron. The fanged flying squirrel that gives the Riders away was the Dryad Flying Squirrel from V3, and the red and black spider thing from the big melee that Liss stabbed was an Arachnea Rubor from Kabuto. And the bat she's chasing at the end is Bat Mutant from Kamen Rider Black himself.**

 **Kamen Rider Showa belongs to author Kamen Rider Chrome, and is used with permission. Thanks.**

 **Well, there it is for now. More to come, and to quote CornShaq, I hope you enjoyed.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Kamen Rider Tarock Re-Dealt: All Rider War – The Devil's Nail**

 **Part 2**

As they watched another red building on the holographic display of the city hovering in midair turned white, and from the top a small yellow blip came flying up to the saucer floating above the city that represented its home base.

Their home base.

END-Shocker's home base.

At the center of the room, in a sealed transparent room, a group of men in white unitards and ski masks were sorting slivers of shiny red metal, trying to find how they all fit together. On one end of a table they'd already managed to find enough to make the shape of a sharp tip of something like a blade.

Watching them at their work was an imposing man wearing a golden mask and long red cape, leaning on an ornate cane. "This is taking too long," he growled. "The Dai Shuryo wants this complete by tonight!"

"We know, _General_ Jak. We know," replied another man watching the technicians' efforts. With his wild mane of white hair, immaculate white suit and black cape he looked a lot like a foppish composer. He wouldn't have been in a place like that long if he was, though. "And every minute another piece is found and brought back. We've even located the hilt."

"Locating is not retrieving, Shinigami," Jak retorted, scowling bellowing his golden mask. He turned to another officer, "Titan, I certainly hope **your** squads are putting in more of an effort than Shinigami's."

The other two had been sights to behold, but they were nothing compared to Titan. He wore a tailored black suit with white gloves and cravat, but his head was a black oblong shape covered in wide, never-closing eyes surrounding one central bloodshot eye that seemed to stare right through to a person's soul.

"You overestimate your position, Jak," Titan said in a resounding voice. "And you _under_ estimate END-Shocker. We are endless. That is why the Dai Shuryou has given us that name. We _will_ find them."

"Some general," laughed another figure. "A few setbacks and he turns into a panicking coward." The speaker was a shorter man than the others, wearing black armor and a huge, wide helmet patterned with black and gold stripes that made itlook a little like a Pharaoh's headdress.

Suddenly a gleaming sword was in Jak's hand and being held against the black-clad man's throat. "Say that again, Ambassador," Jak snarled at him. "The empire I served spanned worlds. None of you have never even seen the stars, have you!?"

"If you're so anxious, why don't you actually go out there and oversee the efforts yourself?" Titan scoffed.

"Why don't _you_?" Jak angrily retorted.

"Because _I_ have faith in our operatives," Titan answered him. "I have faith in the power the Dai Shuryou's given us all. And _I_ remember that our objective is to reassemble the artifact, not kill Riders. Once it's all in one piece again, they'll be dead anyway."

General Jak slung his sword over his shoulder and strode out of the room. "And while _you're_ sitting around basking in your status, _I'll_ be out _earning_ status."

Once he was gone, the Ambassador asked, "Shouldn't we have stopped him?"

"Why?" Shinigami retorted. "If he actually kills a few, the better for our side. If he doesn't, there'll be more of the world for us when this is all over."

* * *

Tarock sped up as she tried to keep the one-armed Bat Mutant in sight, but steering her bike was turning out to be a problem with one hand covered by a giant spike or cannon or whatever her new weapon was supposed to be.

The Bat Mutant looked over his shoulder and spotted her gaining and started to pump his wings even harder to pull away. Tarock aimed and fired a bolt of watery energy that clipped his wing and sent him into a spin, but the mutant was an expert flier and with an angry shriek he pulled up into the air again.

And as he did something huge came diving at Tarock from the other direction, something so big the entire sky seemed to go dark before it slammed into the ground with such incredible force Tarock was blown off her bike and eighty feet through the air before she crashed through a wall and rolled to a jarring stop.

Instead of feeling dazed, Tarock jumped up and punched through the roof of the half-wrecked building she'd landed in. Normally even she might've been scared to have something that huge drop out of the sky on her. It had to have been nearly a hundred feet tall, looking like some kind of hellish chandelier with enormous green wings made of ugly stained glass. Sticking out from near the center was a long neck with a skull-like face on it and underneath that were three writhing arms with pincers big enough to crush a car.

But right now, she was just angry. This thing was getting between her and the Bat Mutant, and she needed to get back what he had been sent to steal. And now this thing…what had Gentaro called them before? Sabbats? She had to get past it, but did even she have enough firepower to bring down something like that?

The Sabbat screamed and splayed its giant glass wings before taking to the air. Tarock considered those special cards in her case that could combine into a giant lion, but wondered if it was the time. This felt so early in the marathon still, and it had taken forever for them to recharge themselves after the first time she'd used them.

Instead she aimed her arm cannon at the Sabbat and fired at one wing, but the ripping bolt just deflected off doing no damage. She changed targets and aimed at its head but as her next shot glanced off it turned to look at her, zeroing in on her vantage point.

Tarock ran to the edge of the roof and jumped to the next one as the Sabbat spun along the ground like a tornado, smashing the building she'd been on to dust and taking off the side of the other building she'd jumped to for safety. The Sabbat suddenly lifted off the ground, still spinning, and once it was in the air it stopped and fixed its eye sockets on where Tarock was standing.

Then with a scream that made her clutch her ears pain, it was diving at her, pincers snapping and its giant glass wings still ringing with the force of its cry. Tarock managed to aim her weapon, figuring she could at least go to Hell knowing she'd fought to the end. But then a streak of light ran up into her arm cannon…

" **Dire! Frozen Malestrom!** " The spike on the end folded back into a parabolic dish as it had before but now a stream of water flowed out from the end and formed itself into a spiral. Within seconds it was a giant whirlpool with dark chunks of ice spinning inside. It slammed into the Sabbat and tore off half its wings before knocking the grotesque creature out of the sky.

The Sabbat landed with a crash that knocked Tarock down. Frost coated its face but it shook its neck back and forth to wave it off before it screeched in anger and started crawling along the ground to her. But again Tarock felt a power that was incredible even compared to what she was used to start building in her arm cannon.

" **Cataclysm! Tidebreaker!** " Energy stabbed out of Tarock's cannon and a curved prong grew from each side, forming a huge golden trident. It went screaming at the furious Sabbat and blasted right through the monster, scattering hunks of metal and stained glass all over the area. Its skull-like head crashed onto the roof next to Tarock and snapped at her angrily a few times then finally went still and crumbled into a pile of blackened junk.

Tarock panted from all the power she'd just unleashed , but she looked back and forth across the sky for any sign of the Bat Mutant. For just a second she thought she saw a dark speck in the distance, but by the time she'd jumped down into the wide wrecked area where the Sabbat had been and found Shift Runner, it was completely gone.

She'd destroyed a deadly monster.

But she'd failed Black.

* * *

With no enemies in sight Tarock reverted back to plain old Liss Decker, feeling plainer than ever after letting the Bat Mutant get away with his prize. She rode through the streets awhile, trying to see if there were signs of any other groups of monsters looking for the same thing as her prey had gotten away with, but aside from a few of those weird shrieking men in black unitards and ski masks who took one look at her bike and vanished into the alleys, the streets were strangely empty. People were probably hiding from all the monsters, but where had all the monsters gone, and what were they looking for…?

Suddenly a door creaked open and a man stepped into the street. "Hello," he called, "Do you need help?"

"Do I need help?" Liss asked. "Mister, maybe you didn't notice, but there's monsters everywhere! You sure you should be coming out and giving them the chance to see you?!"

He laughed lightly. "That doesn't look like something you're very worried about."

"I can protect myself," Liss said.

"So can I," he replied. "I've seen this kind of thing before."

Liss knitted her brow and studied the man. He was tall and thin, lanky to the point of being almost bony, but the weirdest thing about him was his hairstyle. It was a dark auburn with streaks of grey, but it hung down completely covering one half of his face so that Liss could only see one of his eyes. Even when he turned his face to the side, she could still only see one eye at a time.

"You're looking a little stressed, miss. Why don't I show you someplace you can relax for a minute?" he suggested.

"I really can't, okay? I need to find this giant bat who flew by here a while ago. He's got something really important."

"Oh?" the man asked, peering at her around his strange haircut. "What does he have?"

"A piece of metal."

He smiled faintly in amusement. "A piece of metal! Well, then…"

"Have you seen a giant bat fly past here or not?" Liss demanded.

"Probably," he answered. "So many strange things have been flying past lately. I'm afraid if there was one bat in particular, he slipped past me. Are you sure you aren't interested in taking a break, young lady?"

"All right, if it'll help you asking," Liss said after a second. "What do I call you, though?"

He shrugged with a wry smile. "Just call me Joe." Then he waved his hand toward a storefront near the street corner. Over the door was a sign written in kanji with an eye in the middle that had a vertical slit for a pupil. As Liss looked at it for a second wondering what it meant the symbols seemed to flow and rearrange themselves into words she understood: Cat's Eye Café.

Liss parked Shift Runner outside and followed Joe into the place, a traditional-looking little café with a bar made of orange glass with a few stools in front of it and vases holding pretty but fake-looking flowers on top of it. There were a few tables along the front window, but Liss's eyes were drawn to a weird poster of a naked woman facing away behind the counter. What was that doing there?

Behind the bar was a woman in her late twenties, with patient dark eyes that matched the color of her luxurious wavy hair. She greeted Liss and Joe with a warm but practiced smile. "Ah, Shimamura-san! I'm surprised to see you again. Won't Francoise scold you for spending so much time around beautiful young girls? I see you even found a new one today!"

Joe gave a smile of his own and responded with a dry laugh like he'd heard this many times before. "I'm glad you're still keeping the place open even with what's going on out there, Rui," he replied.

"They don't seem like the kind to be looking for a good cup of coffee…is that what we can get you?" Rui asked.

"For me, yes," Joe said. "As for…" He turned toward Liss.

"Liss," she supplied. "I'd prefer some green tea, if you have it."

"Of course, Lees," Rui replied and turned around to start working on their order. Liss sighed and just took a seat at the counter, resigned to her name being mangled at this point.

Suddenly a cat yowled and Liss, her nerves already on end from everything she'd seen that day, whipped around to face it. There in the far corner of the room, hidden by a shadow, was a wispy teenage girl sitting in front of a laptop with a yellow-furred cat in her lap. Rui turned and gave her a disapproving look. "Ai! Keep the cat quiet when we have customers!"

"Onee-san, look!" Ai replied and spun her laptop around. It showed a website with a logo that Liss thought said ORE Journal, showing a video of a crowd of monsters storming through the streets. After a second it cut to an aerial view of the city, showing red columns that appeared to represent those gangs of monsters, all heading for the middle of town. "They say it looks like they found what they were looking for and now they're all meeting in one place!"

Liss grumbled at what that meant, and wondered where Black was now and if he'd end up solving her mistake. Or if anyone would have the chance. But then Rui set a teacup in front of her, and Liss took a grateful sip. As she was leaning forward to set her cup down she noticed Ai was standing a few inches away, staring at her face.

"What happened to your eye?"

"Ai!" Rui glared at her. "You can't just ask someone something like that!" Joe snickered.

Liss gave her a bewildered look, but Ai just tilted her head and stared at the white crystal orb in one socket that had replaced her eye after a terrible battle. "A monster smashed my face there. Some people put that in there to replace it," Liss replied simply.

"Oooooooh! You fight monsters? You must be really strong then! Hey Rui! Let's ask her to join!" Ai blurted out.

"Shhhhhhhhhhhh!" Rui hissed. "You've said enough, little girl!"

"But don't you think we could use some muscle when Hitomi's away?" Ai asked, oblivious to her sister's irritation. Joe laughed lightly. "She's really busy right now protecting Toshi from all those monsters, right? And we need to get going soon. Wouldn't she be a big help?"

Liss knitted her brow. "What's she talking about?"  
" **Nothing** ," Rui assured her, cutting off anymore statements from her little sister with a pointed glare. "More tea, Lees?"

She nodded. "Sure. But then I should really get back out there and see if I can help."

"Maybe you shouldn't be in such a hurry, Lees," Joe spoke up.

"What are you talking about? Of course I have to hurry."

Joe sipped his coffee and nodded gently. "Of course. But I'm sorry to say, you won't be the one to finally slay evil. Evil's something in all of us; it can't be destroyed, it can only be contained. You aren't the first Kamen Rider, and even the first Kamen Rider wasn't the first one to fight an evil group to the death. There'll always be another. Some patience wouldn't hurt."

"Eh? She's a Rider?" Ai asked loudly, but a glare from Rui shut up the entire room. Liss was picking up her teacup again when she heard a strange chattering noise from the street. She turned her stool around just in time to see a purple-feathered bird monster with a large white beak and wearing a belt with END-Shocker's symbol on it, a skeletal bird spreading its wings to the sky.

And tucked into that belt was a jagged piece of shiny red metal.

Liss almost choked on her mouthful of tea. She was reaching into duster for the Arc Driver, but Joe reached out and put a hand on hers. "Wait," he said. A second later five other monsters came slinking out of the shadows between buildings and gathered around the Purple Parrot. A red-furred, spotted cat creature, maybe a jaguar; a snake-man with silver scales; a huge blue fish with wicked teeth that reminded Liss of a barracuda; an orange-skinned iguana crawling on all fours; finally a dark green monkey-man swung down from the top of a building.

"Do you really think you can take on so many?" Joe whispered.

"I've beaten worse monsters than those," Liss retorted.

"Like the one that took your eye, huh?" Joe said. "Why not spare yourself some new scars if you can? There are other ways, you know."

She narrowed her eyes. "And you know one, you're saying?"

He smiled patiently at her and stood up. From out of nowhere he produced a faded yellow scarf and wrapped around his neck. "I've done this a few times," Joe said. Suddenly he was gone from her side and the door to the café had been blown open by something Liss couldn't see.

Then a second later a blur with a yellow trailing behind it charged through the crowd of monsters, knocking them aside with a force she never could've managed in her Wands Form. The blur whipped back through them again, stopping for a split-second at the side of the Purple Parrot and then shooting off down the street again. Liss slipped out the front door after it while the monsters were distracted by the surprise attack.

Just around the street corner, leaning casually against a wall but panting slightly, was Joe. As she came up he held up one hand, fingers clutching a shard of shining red metal.

"Who are you, mister?" Liss asked, a little suspicious, but a little awed.

"I'm Joe," he answered. "You might also say I'm your predecessor. So I know what I'm saying when I tell you there will always be evil to fight, Rider. Don't plunge into it so readily it overwhelms you; there will always be villains, but there seems to be a regular shortage of heroes." Then he put the metal into Liss's gloved hand.

A scream came from above: it was the Green Monkey jumping off the roof of the building over them, and as he came down he vaulted off the side of the opposite building to come shooting at them like a hairy screaming missile. Joe's eye flashed for a second before he turned into a speeding blur that ricocheted between the sides of both buildings at angle, going higher and higher until he slammed into Green Monkey in midair, sending the monster's head and arm spinning away. Liss took off running to take advantage of the time Joe was buying her by taking on the monsters.

She ran down an alley, wishing she knew this town at all so she'd know a good way to run to lose a pursuer. She took a few wild turns as she wound through back streets, ducking under a chainlink fence and through a lot full of rusty old cars. But from above her she could hear a weird cry of "Kill you! KILL YOU!" Liss risked a glance over her shoulder and saw Purple Parrot flying above keeping an eye on her. Suddenly Silver Snake slithered out from underneath one of the old car wrecks, while Orange Iguana jumped down from an equally rusty old storage building. The two monsters scuttled after Liss, driving her toward a brick building that looked like the office of the lot.

But she clutched the metal shard even as her back was pressed against the rear door of the building. Purple Parrot landed and started stalking her along with his reptilian friends, but just as Liss was reaching for her Arc Driver she was sure she could hear the sound of a train coming from right behind her. Then powerful blue and yellow arms wrapped themselves around her from behind and yanked her through the door.

In the confusion no-one spotted the tiny wisp of rainbow-colored light streaking for the door just before it closed.

* * *

The next thing Liss knew she'd landed on her butt and a door slammed shut in front of her, a blast of air whipping her hair into her face. After a second she recognized the familiar clacking of train tracks underneath her…and two new monsters were standing over her

One was covered in thick blue scales, like hunks of turtle shell all over his chest, head, arms and legs. The other one was covered in yellow and brown, with strands of fur hanging off his shoulders and a long horn extending from his forehead.

Liss grabbed for her Arc Driver again, but to her surprise the two of them jumped back and held up their hands.

"We don't want to want fight!" the blue one said, then slowly knelt down to be at Liss's eye level. He took her wrist, then undid her glove and stroked her hand. "I could never bring myself to hurt such a lovely creature…They call me Urataros, charming lady, and this is the DenLiner! It's such an incredible machine, allow me to show you."

She grabbed her glove back and stood up. "I don't even care about how you did it, but why did you bring me here if you don't want a fight?"

"To take you where you need to be," a calm voice answered from behind the two monsters. Liss looked past them to see a man in a dull brown suit sitting at a small table at the back of the car. He had a round head and thinning hair, and a napkin tucked into his collar as he delicately picked away at a pile of fried rice in front of him that had a tiny flag sticking out of the top. "That's what all trains do!" he said with a cheeky grin.

"And let me show you the length and breadth, my lady!" Urataros said and fell to one knee, taking Liss's still-uncovered hand. She pulled it away in annoyance but he stood up and leaned her against the wall. "…won't you let me reel you in?"

The other monster bumped him out of the way. "She doesn't have time to flirt with you! She's an ally of justice!...Aren't you, miss?"

But Urataros shoved him aside. "She's got **nothing** more important to do, Kintaros. No-one can get off until we reach another stop. I promise to make your stay…memorable."

"Coffee? Tea?" a shrill voice interrupted, and Liss found herself grateful. A white-clad waitress with a pink streak through her hair pushed a drinks cart through the door.

"I'll have some!" Liss called out and stepped away from Urataros.

"It's your funeral," said someone sitting by himself behind her. Liss turned and squinted at the man, wearing a plain black overcoat over a pink shirt and black pants, with a weird pink box with a pair of what looked like lenses lenses hanging from a strap around his neck. He was flicking through a stack of photos in his hands without looking up as he said it, all of them blurred or overexposed to the point of being unrecognizable. He set them down on one side of his table, and had no reaction at all when he picked up the coffee mug the waitress put in front of him and accidentally spilled it onto his photos.

Or had it been an accident?

Liss took a seat against the window and a sip of tea, then immediately turned and spat it out, spraying the window. "What kind of tea is this?"

"Oh, did I put in too much pepper?" asked the waitress.

"Who puts pepper in tea?!"

"Well, everyone said it was so bland, I was trying to make it more interesting!" the waitress said with an innocent smile, then obliviously turned away from Liss and pushed her cart on down the length of the dining car.

The two monsters had retreated to a table to sit in silence. Urataros stared into the distance, and Liss wondered if he was still thinking of some way to put the moves on her. Kintaros, however, leaned against the wall and started to snore.

Liss set down her tea, not interested in it anymore, and just stared out the window at the strange dry landscape of blinding sand, canyons and barren mountains under an unforgiving sun the train was passing through. Were they really traveling through time? Was that what it looked like outside time the way she usually saw it? And what time would it be when she got the chance to get off again?

As she sat there one of the end doors opened and a group of people came in…what kind of people commuted on a train like this? One man stood out to Liss in particular: from the goofy smile on his face alone she would've called him a teenager, but the fluorescent colors of his clothes under his black jacket just made the idea stick even more. There was a blue t-shirt, magenta sleeves peeking out from his jacket, and bright purple pants with a pattern of pink, yellow and blue squares all over them. He took a seat opposite the photographer, who paid no attention to him at all.

At the tail end of the group was another strange man but after a second Liss realized he wasn't wearing a mask. His entire body was a dark indigo, his face sleek and reptilian with two fins coming off the top of his head and another golden pair on the sides, framing his fang-filled mouth. He had on a long trenchcoat that matched the colors of the rest of his body, and when he saw Liss staring as he walked past he snickered, whipped out a bubble pipe and blew it in her face before he broke away and danced to an empty seat at the end of the car, swiping a cup of coffee off the trolley as he went.

Suddenly a small tremor ran through the train. The man in the corner who'd been eating the pile of rice moaned in disappointment as the pile flattened all over his plate and the tiny flag toppled over. "Maybe next time, Owner?" the waitress asked supportively.

"Maybe next time," he groused, oblivious to the flecks of rice all over his face.

Suddenly Kintaros turned and looked urgently at the wall. "What was that? Crying?"

"…what?" Liss asked, eying the monster cautiously.

"This happens all the time," the waitress assured her with a smile.

Then without warning Kintaros turned transparent like a ghost and flew away through the side of the car.

The second after he disappeared another monster came through the wall and collapsed in the middle of the car. This one was covered in red scales with a pair of horns sticking up from the forehead of his demonic face, and weird black "M"-like symbols all over his chest and shoulders. He raised one fist into the air and angrily screeched, "Nobody said crying, stupid bear!" The red monster picked himself up off the floor, kicked an empty table, not budging it an inch, and sat down hard in Kintaros's empty seat, grunting in annoyance. "Tch! I was just at my climax…"

Liss just sighed. She wondered if Sensei had any idea how weird some of the Kamen Riders really were. Was she anyone to talk, though?

"When can I get off again?" she asked. "I really need to get back in there."

The owner gave little smile. "When the train crosses another access point."

"But—"

He cut her off with a shrug. "There's no way to hurry it, we're going as fast as we can already! The DenLiner is the fastest train ever made! It goes even faster than time!" he finished with a laugh.

The red monster looked Liss over and made a dismissive sound in his throat when he saw her belt and no doubt guessed what it was for. "Wait, it's that American Rider! What are you doing here? Did you get scared and run away from your mission?!" he snorted. Liss looked back at him, eyes narrowed, and he looked back at her, face immobile. But then she turned back to pondering the landscape. She looked around at the other passengers for some clue as to what to do, since they all seemed used to these monsters on their train.

But the waitress said nothing and just wiped down the counter, and the owner looked intently at the back of his handkerchief as he wiped his face clean. As the red monster stomped over to confront her Liss realized they wanted to see how she'd handle it.

"I was sent after one of the monsters by Black. It had a piece of metal that's apparently really important," Liss said. "I lost it and I ended up here." He seemed unsurprised at her answer. "Your group didn't get in trouble, I guess?"

"Sure we did! They're out fighting it now (where I should be)! Because _we_ aren't afraid of stupid monsters!" the red monster declared, and Liss wondered what the difference was between the four on that train and other "monsters." But he went on, "Looks like _you're_ hiding out as far away as you can get, huh?"

Liss turned away from him. "Do you have any tea _without_ pepper, please?" she asked the waitress.

"I'd have to make a new pot."

"That's fine, I'll wait for it. Nothing else to do right now," Liss replied.

The red monster slammed his fist against the wall. "Hey! I'm talking to you!" he snarled.

Liss sighed and looked down at the cooling cup of pepper tea in front of her, but pushed it away. "I really don't feel up to arguing with anybody, Mister…"

"Momotaros!" the red monster snarled, which got a chuckle from the other two monsters in the car. He glared at them but they didn't stop. He turned them back to Liss. "You're running away? What kind of Kamen Rider are you?!"

Again, no-one said anything. The owner got up and left the car, the waitress following him to hopefully start that pot of non-spicy tea. The photographer stood up and aimed the thing around his neck out the window, carefully snapping shots of the empty landscape. Urataros hadn't budged an inch in his contemplative silence. Only the young man in the fluorescent colors was looking their way at all, smiling in amusement.

For a second Liss felt an urge to ball a fist and show him how funny it really was. But as Momotaros screamed his scorn at her again, she sucked in a loud, deep breath and shut her eyes. Surprisingly Momotaros stopped in mid-sentence and let out a confused grunt as he studied his unresponsive target.

It felt like ages had passed since the time she'd first met that strange girl named only Lost. Since then, especially since Lost had been taken away by the Empress and Liss had failed to get her back, Liss's only thought had been becoming powerful enough to find some way to save her. Everything else had seemed unimportant. Like someone else could worry about it; Lost was her only concern.

Once, Liss had been an angry delinquent who only saw her powers as the way to prove that she mattered to a world that saw her as a worthless teenager who'd never amount to anything. That Liss would've punched this red demon or whatever he was clean out for getting in her face, and reveled in her strength.

But thinking about the time and those kinds of petty emotions, Liss just felt tired. The red monster or demon or whatever was being a pain in the ass, but she'd been one herself when she first became Tarock. That kind of person wasn't worth the effort of a knockout punch, and she'd only be turning into an asshole again for doing it.

"I guess I'm a Kamen Rider who's learning to pick her battles," Liss answered.

"Oh?" the young man in the fluorescent colors said, his grin widening, turning slightly sinister. "So what would you do if… _this_ happened?"

Liss tensed herself for danger at his ominous words but he'd already flung something into the air; an orange blob that splattered against the wall, spraying bits of itself everywhere. She just had time to duck out of the way of one before it expanded into someone wearing a camouflage-print uniform and toting an assault rifle. But instead of a head there was a weird orange _growth_ shaped like a bloated turkey with two legs sticking out from the back. The rest of the splatters had turned into identical monstrous soldiers.

Immediately the train car was a scene of chaos. The glob-headed soldiers fired their guns, tearing up the dining tables and shattering the windows, filling the air with broken glass and blasts of hot wind from outside. Momotaros, Urataros and the purple monster who'd been blowing bubbles were on their feet and wielding weapons. Urataros swung a long pole with diamond-shaped blades at the glob-heads while Momotaros had somehow produced a giant sword and knocked another of their attackers to the floor with it. The purple monster had a huge shotgun in his hands and as he squeezed the trigger Liss jammed her hands up against her ears to keep from going deaf from the blast.

The owner and waitress scrambled out of the car along with the other passengers. The photographer sat at his table, sipping his coffee and looking completely unfazed by the battle exploding all around him.

Just as Liss was about to join in an iron-hard grip closed around her wrist. It was the man in the fluorescent colors who'd started it all, and he was dragging her to the access door in the side of the car. "Play a game with me," he said with a smirk.

"Sure," Liss answered. "This one's called 'Kiss my Fist.' " She threw a punch with her free hand at his face but he caught her fist effortlessly with his other hand.

"It's too noisy in here," he said with his smile not budging an inch. "Let's play outside."

Then he kicked the door open and leaned back, pulling Liss with him…

* * *

He held onto her wrists as they both fell, letting go a few seconds before they hit the grounded. While he landed on his feet Liss gasped in pain and surprise as she hit the cracked earth on her already sore rips but rolled with the impact a few times before she slowed to a stop and managed to get her feet under her. Before she'd gotten to her feet, the Arc Driver was locked in place around her waist.

But he was ready too; in one hand he held a weird blue box with a yellow knob on the front and two slim black bars sticking out from underneath. " _I'll_ pick the game this time," he said, and twisted the knob.

" **Perfect Puzzle** ," it rasped. Liss tensed but her guard faltered for a second as she thought she placed the name. Wasn't it a cell phone game? What the hell was this guy doing?

" **What's the next stage?...What's the next stage?** " the box exclaimed before spitting a blue window in front of itself that whipped backward covering him and sent giant colorful coins spinning through the air around him. " **Dual up! Get the glory in the chain! Perfect Puzzle.** "

The window shattered, leaving him changed. Now over a white undersuit with black block designs he wore heavy armor like Tarock's, a dark blue mask framing green eyes narrowed in determination. Thick blue shoulder guards framed a gold-colored chestplate with jigsaw piece designs inside, although on the back she thought she caught a glimpse of red along with a huge version of the knob on the box he'd used to change. Blue gauntlets with golden wristbands covered his hands while black boots with golden plating reached to his knees.

"Kamen Rider…Paradox," he introduced himself. "I hope you'll be an interesting opponent," he went on in a smirking tone.

Liss didn't answer his taunt, sparing a second to watching the DenLiner speed into the distance as tracks laid themselves in front of it. But as it seemed like it was starting to turn back Liss's way something exploded out of the ground, a hideous gigantic creature with a black snake-like body and a collection of curled yellowed horns emerging from its back near the top. A mane of white fur surrounded its red-scaled, alligator-like head.

"Let the Orochi keep them busy, you've got enough on your mind," Paradox said, putting away a weird green plastic-looking object that was still glowing faintly with power. Then in the next second he'd closed the distance between him and Liss and thrown a punch that she dodged just in time, his knuckles slicing through the edge of her hair.

" **Swords Suit!** " In a flash she was clad in her red armor once again and turned to slam her elbow into the back of Paradox's neck, but he was ready and blocked it on his forearm. In the split second after that attack Tarock lashed out with her leg and caught him in the midsection with her knee, staggering him for a second but it was all the time Tarock needed to throw a punch that connected with his head, jerking it violently to the side.

She went into the strongest spinning kick she could manage with fatigue starting to set in with all the fighting she'd been in already that day. Her foot slammed into Paradox's midsection again and he gasped in pain but as she jumped, clenching her fists together to bring them down on his chest he jumped backward himself and suddenly held his arms up in front of him and the weird coins that had scattered everywhere floated and formed into a grid above him.

"You're not bad…let's see how adaptable you are," Paradox said. Then he jerked his arms around, shifting the coins up, down and across. Finally two went drifting down to him with the rest flying off again: a yellow one and a pale blue one. " **Speeding up! Invisible!** " said the voice of his device as they touched his body, which seemed to ripple and then fade from sight.

A second later there was a rush of wind by her side and something drummed at her kidney with punches. Tarock gasped and fell to her knees in surprise and pain just before a flurry of what felt like kicks pummeled her back and knocked her flat.

…right in front of one of the weird coins, a green one with a picture of someone holding up a four-leaf clover. Not sure if it would even work for her, Tarock reached out for it.

" **Fortune!** " She jerked up in surprise as she heard her own Arc Driver say the word. It could recognize these things? The coin dissolved into a green glow that flowed down her hands, through her body and into the crystal dome in the middle of the Arc Driver.

And just then the DenLiner swerved to avoid a lunge from the Orochi off in the distance. As one car switched to the front and opened up revealing a long snake-like head, light glinted off it from the sun, and in the intense glare Tarock could see the outline of someone running up to attack her at incredible speed.

Paradox.

She cupped her hands together and swung, the sword Skycalibur forming in her hands. It wasn't the thin-bladed claymore she was used to, now it was a wide-bladed broadsword with a design of outspread wings on its red crossbar. It seemed to sing as she swung it with all her strength at where Paradox seemed to be coming from. She heard a cry of surprise and the sword shook at it hit something she couldn't see.

A second later he faded into view again, chuckling. "You're not so bad," he said, but lifted his arms and the coins all over the area flew up for him to make his pick again.

As they formed into a grid Tarock held out her hands and suddenly the air was full of blinding crystal dust. Paradox grunted in surprise as the dust formed itself into a storm of crystalline snakes, moths, spraying sea horses, stacks of turtles and buzzing horned beetles. A few swarmed Paradox, keeping him from focusing on his power coins. The others spread themselves around scattering the coins he'd summoned. Beetles caught the edges of the coins on their horns and pushed them as they flew, sea horses focused the streams of water they spat to batter his prizes away, and snakes sank their fangs into each other's tails, formed themselves into crude tires around the coins and wheeled them away across the sand.

The moths were darting back and forth over Paradox and sprinkling thick, blinding powder in his eyes to distract him while beetles rammed him with their horns and turtles rolled and threw themselves against to knock him off-balance again and again.

It had taken every Wild Card in her case, but it also bought her the moment she needed to end the fight. Tarock concentrated all her power into her new sword and started to spin. " **Cataclysm! Surging Current!** " Every time she turned faster and then even faster until a whirlwind formed around her. It whipped dust and rocks from the ground into the air. Lighting arced along the airstream, and even over the roaring wind she'd created she was sure she could hear a grunt of pain. After another minute it cleared, and Paradox came falling down like a bomb and hit the ground with a crash.

Then he got back up.

* * *

The Orochi howled as it crawled after the DenLiner, only for the snake-like head the train had sprouted to turn around and spray a blast of power that seared its sinuous body.

Inside the head car, the purple monster in the trenchcoat was sitting on the back of a motorcycle, giggling to himself as he steered the train in battle. It wasn't how this kind of battle was usually carried out, but their usual driver was busy elsewhere. He looked back over his shoulder as he heard the door open.

"Ryuutaros," said Urataros. "We're needed. All of us."

"What about that thing?" Ryuutaros retorted in a nasal voice, gesturing at the image of the Orochi on the screen in front of him.

"Fine! Stay here and hide from a fight you worthless _brat_!" Momotaros snarled.

Ryuutaros turned away to get back into his fight, but Urataros stepped forward. "What Momo-chan—"

" _Momo-chan?!_ "

"What he meant was we need to go help out there, or Den-O won't be strong enough. There's still a Kamen Rider here who can keep fighting," Urataros went on. Ryuutaros looked back at him for a second, then all three of them disappeared.

* * *

"Not bad. You've almost got my heart boiling," Paradox said in an amused tone. "But if you want to compare power, let me show you mine."

He pulled the box off his belt and twisted the knob to the other side. " **Knock Out Fighter. The strongest fist! Round one. Rock and fire.** " He slipped it into its slot on the side of his belt. " **Dual UP. Explosion fist. Knock. Out. FIGHTER!** " Suddenly his mask spun around to a red one with a brow made to look like spiky anime hair. The jigsaw design on the chestplate changed to one of hot rod flames, and his chunky shoulder armor jumped off and attached itself to his fists like boxing gloves. Then he came running at Tarock. She swung Skycalibur at him but he easily blocked with the side of one of his gauntlets, shattering her blade into a hundred shining pieces, and delivered a punch that cracked the air and sent Tarock flying.

She sailed through space for almost two hundred feet, totally unaware of what had just happened before she came to a bone-jarring stop, the front of her armor caved in where Paradox had hit her. The only thing her dazed mind could process was a sensation of green in front of her eyes, and something big and round rolling into her open hand, almost by itself…

Then suddenly she sat up, feeling fine and full of energy. Just in time to see a silver coin with a picture of someone flexing their arms on the front before it faded away, its powers spent on her. But she looked up to see Paradox coming in for another attack, and decided it was time to stop pacing herself.

" **Empress! Major!** " yelled her Arc Driver as she loaded another card. What was left of her Swords armor shattered away and a giant card appeared in the air drifting down over her, forming her regal purple Empress armor. The sun caught on the crown-like points of her new mask, filling her with a sense of truly awesome power.

Paradox just kept coming and when he was close enough threw a punch with so much force that a trail of fire exploded across the ground for fifty feet in the direction he'd swung and shattered most of the swarm of Wild Cards. But Tarock was already gliding through the air above him out of his reach.

She came down with a kick that he blocked on his punching gauntlets and Tarock vaulted into a backwards flip, her cape fluttering behind her. As soon as she landed Paradox threw another massive punch but Tarock suddenly swung a weapon of her own, a heavy scepter with a large jewel on the tip, the Arm of the Empire. Her attack knocked Paradox's punch away before she swung it again like a mace and landed a vicious blow on his chest that sent a giant fountain of sparks flying. She whirled and pointed the Arm of the Empire at him and her Arc Driver announced, " **Woe! Quickening Ray!** " before a beam of purple laser light lanced from the end and ripped into his chest armor.

He stood back up, armor smoking, but he was laughing quietly. "My heart really is boiling…"

But Tarock didn't give him a chance to go on. She summoned her power again and the Arc Driver said, " **Dire Fate! Imperial Onslaught!** " The gem on her scepter shimmered and a cloud of energy issued from it, within seconds forming itself into a crowd of armed warriors that rushed at Paradox like a giant screaming wave. He swung and punched with all his incredible might but some of Tarock's ghostly soldiers managed to get close enough to gouge him with their weapons.

But Paradox was still on his feet by the time the ghost army had disappeared. "You're not bad," he said. "Why don't we settle this with one last contest?" Then he spun the knob on his device again. " **Finisher: Dual Gashat. KNOCK! OUT! Critical Smash!** "

He went running at Tarock with a yell, and she only replied, "Suits me fine," and concentrated on her own ultimate attack. " **Cataclysm! Paragon Overthrow!** " First the gem in her scepter and then her entire body burned with purple energy. She took off, _flying_ across the distance between her and Paradox, scepter held out in front of her. He swung a glowing fist at her just before they collided and a massive explosion ripped the air.

When the dust and fireballs finally cleared, Tarock was panting but still on her feet, in a patch of grass and violet flowers that hadn't been there before. Paradox had hit the ground a little ways away and his armor rippled before disappearing. He smiled as he got to his feet, though. "You really got my heart boiling," he said, but pulled something out of his jacket. "I think I'll go see if there's anyone else worth playing against now, though."

" **Activating Quick-Travel** ," a mechanical voice said as he pushed the button and then vanished in front of her. Tarock sighed in annoyance that the entire fight had gotten her nowhere, but the howl of a train horn behind her got her attention. She turned around to see the DenLiner coming her way fast with the Orochi right behind it, and a door in the side of the train open with someone leaning out, extending an arm for her to catch.

It was the photographer. The one who hadn't noticed when a fight broke out around him. He leaned over as the train neared where Tarock was standing, and she grabbed his arm to let him pull her aboard.

* * *

The door slammed shut and Tarock fell flat on the floor of the train. For a second there was nothing but the sound of the DenLiner cruising on its tracks but then something huge and dark—the Orochi—smashed into the side, denting the metal and shattering the glass. The train seemed like it was about to tip over for a second before it settled down again.

"You're needed in the front car," the photographer said simply.

"What's in the front car?"

"Something only a Kamen Rider can use. And right now, it looks like you're the closest thing we have."

"Screw you!" Tarock snapped, but he just smirked faintly in amusement, reminding her not a lot of Paradox. Who were these people?

But a screech from the Orochi pushed the question out of her mind. Tarock got up and stumbled to the front of the train, passing scared-looking passengers until the last door opened and she found herself in a darkened room with a motorcycle parked in the middle. Sleek and covered in blue and white armor, it looked almost as tough as her Shift Runner.

Almost.

She climbed on top and gripped the handlebars, then almost let go as a sensation of _knowing_ hit her brain like a tidal wave. A screen in front of her lit up showing the giant black serpent crawling alongside DenLiner before giving it another bump that almost tipped the train off its tracks. But Tarock didn't need it, she could _see_ everything around the train while she was on this bike, even the canyon three miles ahead that DenLiner's tracks formed right over while the Orochi had to stop and jump it.

Tarock turned and the train turned with it, forming tracks in an arc as she went back the way they'd come to face the angry monster.

"How do I fight it—" she started to ask, but then the train cars split off from each other, and one at the rear sped up to the front on a new track. Once it connected there was a blast of violet energy from the front, reshaping it into a giant image of Tarock's mask in her Empress Form: long arcing yellow lenses with purple plating beneath and a three-pronged crown-like formation above the eyes.

That was surprising enough to see, but then three long claws on reptilian fingers extended from both sides and front of the train, like the dragons on her scepter.

The Orochi reared back its head and spat a giant fireball at DenLiner but behind her mask Tarock narrowed her eyes, waiting for just the right moment, then when it was seconds away from hitting the train she pulled back and the bike went into a wheelie.

The DenLiner's tracks formed a ramp for just a second and the talons on the front of the train caught the Orochi's fireball. Tarock gunned the bike and the train picked up speed, then she leaned and it threw the fireball it'd caught right back at the Orochi's side. The monster screamed in pain as a scarred patch was left where the fire had hit. The Orochi crawled around to come straight at the Denliner, but Tarock didn't flinch and rode straight toward it, knowing what to do next.

Just as they were about to crash the DenLiner's talons grabbed the Orochi by the neck and tossed the giant serpent into the air. Before it could land again Tarock pulled the train into a steep turn, then leaned hard back on the bike making DenLiner's ramp into the air at an angle. " **Speed Liner! Imperial Splitter!** " the Arc Driver said then the talons on the sides of the train glowed golden before seeming to double in size, rear back and slice through the middle of the falling Orochi.

* * *

With the danger passed Liss staggered back out of the car and DenLiner took control of itself again, going back into a more comfortable speed as it still continued to blaze through the arid space outside of time it occupied. Liss walked back through the cars until she saw the photographer standing by one of the doors and looking absently out the window.

"What are you doing?" Liss asked.

"What does it look like, little girl? Waiting for my stop," he answered her.

Liss sighed, remembering her decision when Momotaros had gotten in her face. "I am too. Gotta find out what's so important about this," she said, fishing the piece of jagged red metal out of her duster pocket.

The photographer made a "hmmm" sound. "There'd be a lot of interesting things to photograph there…Maybe I should go with you."

She could feel the train starting to slow down then and a hiss of air came from the door as it got ready to open. Liss looked up at the photographer. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Me? I'm just a passing-through Kamen Rider."

* * *

 **And half the readers just cried out in despair, the rest in anticipation.**

 **Well, there's another chapter down. As for how Jak can exist in a world where Black never became Black RX, like I showed last time in Tarock's world, well…I'd be really interested in hearing that story myself! Somebody should write that. Or tell me who already did.**

 **For those confused by some of the characters featured here, Joe was my classic Ishinomori cameo like was all the rage in Kamen Rider movies a couple years back. A little too obvious in my choice, I guess, but there you go.**

 **The setting and the various monsters are of course from Kamen Rider Den-O. They appear and disappear kinda like they did here because a different monster possessing the hero is what gives him his different forms. They all disappeared at the end because all of them possess him at the same time to enable his super mode.**

 **Just what are the fragments of red metal? Next time we'll find out, although I'm sure a couple of you have already guessed.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Kamen Rider Tarock Re-Dealt: All Rider War – The Devil's Nail**

 **Part 3**

A red alert klaxon started to sound, seeming to cut against the young woman's ears like a blade. She planted her feet and then with an authoritative yank pulled her hand free from the grasp of the man trying to drag her down the hall.

"Toshi!" she said chidingly. "Of course I'm flattered you're worried about me, but at a time like this I really need to be with my sisters and know they're all right."

"But Hitomi!" the lanky, frizzy-haired man in front of her protested once again. "We've just been ordered to move out, and I can't be around to protect you! The station's the safest place with all those monsters prowling the streets!"

"Utsumi!" barked another man as he climbed into the driver's seat of a squad car at the head of a procession of others, their lights already flashing. "Kiss your girlfriend goodbye and let's move out!"

He sighed and turned back to the woman, taking her hand and kissing her gently below the knuckle. "Please stay at the station, all right? I have something really important to tell you after this is all over…"  
"UTSUMI!"

Hitomi smiled gently and took her hand away. "I'll be looking forward to hearing it," she said. He jogged away to join a column of uniformed police officers as they climbed into their cars, casting a last look over his shoulder at Hitomi as she walked away from the station. She had a faint mysterious smile on her face. The same one that always made him think she knew something he didn't.

It frustrated him as a police detective not being able to figure out what his own girlfriend was thinking, but at the same time it was part of what kept him so intrigued. Wondering what she was hiding and when he'd get the chance to find out…

* * *

Just to see what happened Liss opened the door again, but this time it was just the back room of an abandoned restaurant, full of old bags and boxes. She felt glad to be in a world she understood again, but at the same time felt weirdly disappointed to be off the time train now that she was back.

The photographer was already walking away down the alley where they'd come out. Liss called out to him but he just kept going, paying no attention to her. Once they'd made it to the main street she recognized that they were back by the Cat's Eye Café, where she'd been right before ending up on that strange train. There was a "CLOSED" sign hanging in the window now, and peering through the front window she couldn't see any sign of Joe or the two women who'd been there before.

Parked in front of the place was Shift Runner exactly where she'd left it, surprisingly untouched. Next to it was a bike she didn't recognize: in the middle of its heavy fairing was a wide yellow headlight and a series of pink fins coming out of the top that matched a row of fins on the back, and emblazoned on the side was a symbol like a pink barcode with a bulge in the middle that looked vaguely like a face with bulging eyes and horns or antennae on the top. The photographer casually climbed on top of it and started it up, then turned around and rode off down the street.

"Wait, dammit!" Liss called, but he didn't, and she doubted it was just because he couldn't hear her through his helmet. She strapped her own on and sped after him, following for a few minutes until a building surrounded by blue-uniformed police officers and their squad cars with lights blazing.

The photographer stopped and walked up to the police barricade. A few officers broke away and tried to block him, but he just reached into his coat and flashed a badge at them. "Inspector Tsukasa Kadoya," he said, looking right past them at the top of the building. Liss looked up too and saw the roof had been blown off and numerous windows had been smashed in, probably by some of the dark shapes flying in circles around it. "Looks like things are even worse than I heard."

"Is it really him?" one of the cops muttered. "Is that the man from headquarters?"

"We haven't been able to get close, sir!" said another one with a salute to Tsukasa. "Every time we try to make a push inside, we run into a huge gang of monsters. We've lost a lot of men."

"If there's this many cops here, I'd hate to think of how many they lost," Liss muttered. "But if there's so many monsters, there must be something in there that's damn important."

Tsukasa smirked at her. "You might just be a decent detective someday after all. All right, I'm going in."

The cops looked at each other with bemused expressions. "Sir? All by yourself?!"

"No, not all by myself," Tsukasa replied. "My apprentice will come with me. She needs the experience, after all."

"Apprentice?" Liss exclaimed.

"That's right," Tsukasa said and turned back to the cop. "What was the last point of entry you tried? They'll probably be paying less attention there."

The officer pointed to a door on the side, and whispered directions to Tsukasa. Then he walked off with a purposeful stride, the police parting for him like he was the most important person in the world. Liss stared for a second then ran after him.

Once they were inside the building's side stairwell Liss turned to him and asked, "You're not really a cop, are you?"

"Of course I am," Tsukasa answered, showing her a golden badge with a row of symbols that were already rearranging themselves into TOKYO METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT even as he got it out. "This time."

Liss looked at him sideways. " 'This time'?"

He kept looking straight ahead as he climbed the stairs. "It's just something that happens whenever I end up in a new place. Who knows how."

They got to the first landing and pressed against the door leading inside, listening as a hideous chorus of growls and chatters came from the hall outside. "Well, I hope you're a decent Kamen Rider while you're here," Liss whispered.

Tsukasa said as casually as anything, "I'm one of those no matter where I go."

* * *

The pile of inhuman bodies at Kamen Rider Black's feet grew by another as his awesome Rider Punch knocked another into oblivion. He was one of the greatest to carry the name, and one of the Century Kings besides, empowered to fight to the death to become the supreme ruler of Earth. But there were limits even to powers as incredible as his…

He heard a scream of anger behind him as a monster he thought he'd already seen off, one covered in grey armor with long spiraling horns on both sides of his head and heavy crests on its arms that looked a bit like the head of a horned dragon with massive talons pointed outward, matching its powerful taloned feet. Ragged scars on Black's armor attested to the power of this creature's weapons, but the Kamen Rider went into a stance to wait for his next attack.

Suddenly the monster came spinning at Black, who cupped his hands around his belt buckle and focused for a second, gathering his energy. Once the monster was almost on top of him Black yelled " **KING STONE FLASH!** " A burst of crimson energy came from the red jewel in his belt and flooded the hallway. The monster growled but Black's energy buffeted him back and knocked him to his knees in a daze.

And it bought Black the moment he needed to set up his next attack, jumping into the air and coming down in a powerful flying kick. " **Rider Kick!** " He looked like a comet as he came down, and felt like one when he slammed the heel of his boot into the Dragon Orphnoch's chest and knocked the evil thing through the side of the building.

He screamed in rage as he plummeted out of sight, arcs of power ripping through his body. For a second Black tried to remember what floor he was on and how far his enemy had to fall, when a chilling tremor ran down his antennae. Something or someone whose nature was extremely familiar, but aligned directly opposite from his own.

"Nobuhiko…?" Black asked quietly as he turned, barely daring to hope.

The answer he received was a sudden and vicious blow from a gleaming sword that knocked him across the room. He managed to pry himself off the floor to look up into the face of a man wearing a bright golden mask and a long red cape over his armor. An END-Shocker member he'd never seen before, obviously, and yet…

"Jak!" Black exclaimed, the name seeming to come out of his mouth by itself.

"How do you know my name, Rider? I've never seen you before," Jak demanded, brandishing his sword.

"I…I remember you," Black answered. "We were mortal enemies, once. Crisis…Crisis…why can't I place that word?"

General Jak advanced on him, swinging a gleaming sword. "You've got other things you should be worrying about, Rider," he growled.

* * *

"What do you think they're looking for?" Liss whispered to Tsukasa once they'd climbed another floor and the inhuman sounds of another group of monsters went past them and around the corner.

"Something valuable," he mused distantly. "But something powerful, not worth a lot of money. They wouldn't commit this many of their members to something like that. It's probably some kind of weapon, or something that could be the basis of a weapon."

"But somehow they still haven't found it, or else they wouldn't still be here," Liss replied.

He gave her a blank look. "Oh, so now you're the master detective?" he asked.

Liss arched an eyebrow. "What? You afraid I'm gonna put you out of a job?"

"I get another one whenever I end up in a new place, remember? You'd have to work pretty hard to keep up with me," Tsukasa said a bit dismissively.

"Must be easy for you, then," Liss muttered, but Tsukasa held up a finger for silence. Liss strained her ears to try to pick up whatever he'd noticed, then heard a faint hiss from above them. She slowly craned her neck and froze as she spotted a metallic purple cobra peering over the edge of the hand railing from the floor above. It was huge, its head alone at least as tall as a person, with yellow blade-like extensions coming off its hood.

"Venosnaker," Tsukasa whispered. Then the snake flashed its fangs and threw itself off the railing at them. Tsukasa threw open the door leading out of the stairwell and he and Liss charged through it. The wall behind them exploded into chunks of concrete and plaster as Venosnaker plowed through it.

Liss had her Empress Card clutched between two fingers and was about to load it. But Tsukasa had a card in his hand too and slotted it into a weird white belt buckle.

" **Kamen Ride. Decade!** " Ghostly images of men in armor floated out of thin air and pressed themselves on top of Tsukasa, solidifying into…a suit of watermelon pink armor.

"What?" Liss asked, that seeming bizarre even with all the things she'd seen on that day alone. Across his chest was a long X, and his mask looked like the weird face she'd seen on the side of his bike, with wide green eyes and vertical black bars across it and a small yellow beacon that flashed for a second on the middle of his forehead. He dusted his gauntlets together and turned to face Venosnaker, but the reptile had already lunged at them. Liss and Decade rolled out of the way in opposite directions, and as Venosnaker stormed by them Decade whipped a squared device off his belt. To Liss's disbelief a long blade flicked up from one end and a hilt from the other.

She'd barely blinked and Decade had slashed his weapon along the giant snake's head, and ducked with an impossible speed and grace as Venosnaker whipped around and snapped its giant jaws at his head. Decade flipped the blade back and without warning glowing bullets fired from the top like a gun, peppering the inside of Venosnaker's mouth. The cobra lunged for him, fangs glancing against his shoulder and he gasped in surprise but recovered quickly and flipped backward away from the monster.

Suddenly something smashed open a door and a large red shape dove at Decade from behind, slamming into his shoulders and staggering him for a second. In that second Venosnaker jumped and crashed into Decade with its giant hood. He staggered and the other monster, which looked to Liss like a giant stingray, came swooping at Decade from behind with its tail sparking and aimed at the back of Decade's neck.

Liss hurriedly snapped her Arc Driver into place and was about to load it when the voice of Decade's own belt distracted her. " **Attack Ride. Illusion!** " Decade suddenly split into five copies of himself, filling the hallway. Liss couldn't even pick out the one who'd been trapped between the monsters. The five Kamen Riders went to work chopping, kicking and pummeling at them. Venosnaker was barely fazed at all, but the stingray was pushed back, slammed into a wall and went down as the Decade-clones ganged up on it.

One of them had slipped behind the giant snake unnoticed and had another card in his hand that he slipped into his belt. " **Form Ride. Kiva Bashaa!** " In a flash his armor had changed, now with silver and red boots, like the red chest plate framed with silver he also wore over his black undersuit. His new mask had a silver mouthplate and massive green lenses for eyes, green like the armor covering his right arm and the heavy pistol in his hand. He filled the air with huge green bullets that peppered Venosnaker and the stingray.

Decade's copies faded into thin air, their purpose apparently fulfilled, and for a second he looked over, met Liss's eyes where she'd taken over, and gave a faint nod.

As the battle picked up again, she turned and ran down the hall, eyes open for another way up to the next floor. It didn't feel quite right to turn her back on a monster, but she reminded herself she'd done that to Momotaros too because her energy was better used elsewhere. And she was pretty sure that was what Decade had been trying to tell her; to keep going, to find whatever the monsters were after before they did and keep it out of their hands.

She hoped she was right about it.

* * *

With a practiced silence that had worked so well getting her past the security staff at her old school, Liss snuck up behind one of the ski mask-clad men standing guard at the corner of a hallway. She slammed her linked fists against the back of his neck in a swift and deadly rabbit punch and he went down without a sound. Quickly she ducked into a shadow as she heard someone coming, but it was only another of the masked goons. He ran over as he spotted his fallen comrade but Liss landed a punch to the side of his head and he went down next to the first one.

It had surprised her that for the last couple floors she'd only been running into weak grunts like these two. But that just made Liss sure that the most monsters were still up ahead, and to get to whatever was on the top floor she'd have to get through—

"I have Kamen Rider Black!" a voice thundered across the sky all of a sudden. Liss forgot all about getting to the top for a second. She turned toward where the voice had come from and saw an image of a giant face in a golden mask hovering in the air.

"I am General Jak, an elite of END-Shocker!" he shouted. "Your little heroes have been resisting us, but now the greatest of them has been defeated! In exchange for his life, the Kamen Riders defending the top floors of Smart Brain Tower will withdraw and allow our agents to take anything they please from inside! You have half an hour to concede!"

Liss didn't wait, she ran back the way she'd come until she found a broken window. There she activated the last few Wild Cards she'd managed to save from her fight with Paradox, a couple of snakes and beetles.

The snakes sank their fangs into each others' tails, forming a long rope, and the few beetles she still had wrapped their legs around the head of the snake on top, forming a crude grappling hook with their long horns. Liss whirled it a few times and then tossed it in an arc up to the top floor of the building where her hook snagged on something. Looking around to make sure none of the flying monsters she'd seen from outside were around, Liss started to climb up her crystal rope as fast as she could.

She was up to the windows on the floor above the one she'd been on when she heard the piercing scream of something that had caught sight of her. Liss almost let go of the rope for a second at the sight of it: a bat monster covered in dingy orange fur, with spindly yellow wings and giant bulbous tumors hanging all over his torso. The skin was pulled taut around his devilish face and Liss was sure she could see the shape of the bones in his arms as he pumped his wings and flew right at her.

Liss kicked off the glass and swung away from the building and the bat streaked by, the bony spines on the edges of its wings just clipping the back of her duster as she came back and smacked into the window. The bat turned around to come after her again and Liss hauled herself up the rope as fast as she could go. A second before she was about to get to the top of her rope she felt his bony claws sink into her shoulders and was grabbing for her belt with one hand.

Suddenly something shot through the air above Liss's head and through the monster's torso. He let out a gasp of surprise and pain then let go of Liss to fall out of the sky. She wasted no time climbing to the top floor and flopping on the floor inside. Standing over her was someone wearing a dark green hoodie over black armor, with a weird archery bow in one hand that had what looked like an old rotary phone in the middle and the face of a skeletal bird sticking out of the front. On the visor of his mask was a green emblem of a bow and arrow pointing downward.

He looked at Liss for a second, then opened his belt buckle and pulled out something that looked like an eyeball that made his armor fade away. He was a young man with short, wild blond hair and wearing a jacket, for lack of a better word, decorated with pictures of mountains and cherry blossoms in fluorescent colors. A smile formed on his face and he extended a hand to help Liss up. "Lisa, right? Good thing you made it!"

She _did_ remember him now that she thought about it; he'd been assigned to the same group as hers during that big meeting between all the local Riders. With a nod she took his hand and let him pull her up. "Yeah…Hey, look…" Liss started, but couldn't remember.

"Takeru. Tenkuuji Takeru," he supplied.

"Okay, Takeru. Why don't we go make sure they didn't already get somebody through and steal what they're after already?" Liss asked.

Takeru stared at her for a minute. "What about Black? You heard about him too, right—" he said, but Liss cut him off.

"Of course I did. I think the whole city must've," Liss replied. "But if the bad guys want whatever's up there to send so many guys after it, it must be really, _really_ important, right? Black wouldn't want us to just give that to them, would he?"

"We'd get it back—"

"Fine. I'll go find whatever they want by myself," Liss interrupted with a scowl.

But Takeru ran in front of her. "Wait, Lisa! If you think it's that serious, you're right, we should go together. Riders need to help each other, right?"

Liss nodded. He opened a door into another hall and inside were two of the Riders she remembered from her group at the church, the one in green and purple armor and the one with the weird wing decoration across his chest. They were aiming pistols down the hall and shooting down more of those masked men in the black tights as they tried to storm the hall, and at the end of the hall apparently waiting for his men to soften the Riders up was a weird grey-plated robot with what looked like a giant kitchen faucet for a head.

As Takeru snuck her behind the Riders defending the floor, Liss looked a little longingly at their guns.

Why didn't she get a normal weapon like that?

* * *

A few tense minutes later Liss surreptitiously pushed open a door and peered into a long, rhomboid-shaped room with walls covered in rare paintings and ornamental masks and armor from a dozen cultures she couldn't even begin to name. A few raised pedestals were scattered across the floor with vases and small abstract sculptures in them, covered by glass boxes. One off to the far side caught Liss's eye: a curved half-circle of gold, small spikes protruding from the rounded side. And sticking out of the top were a few ragged stubs of a shiny red metal like the fragment Liss had in her inside pocket.

But that wasn't all. Security cameras were set up in the four corners of the room and silently sweeping back and forth every few seconds. Small black bumps in the walls in front of them looked to be electronic eyes projecting tripwire beams, and Liss spotted more of the small bumps in the bases of the stands running to all directions of the room. There were even a ring of them running along the opening to a skylight in the top of the room. It would be a job and half getting close enough to take the golden hilt.

"That's it," she whispered. She started to creep into the room, keeping careful watch for the electronic eyes, but Takeru put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head.

Liss squinted at him. "So what do you suggest?"

"Don't worry," Takeru said with a reassuring smile, and held up a small object that looked like an eyeball in one hand, with colored bars on the top, bottom and both sides: green, red, pink and blue. He pushed a button on the side and the iris of the object flashed and showed an image of a grasping hand reaching upward, the outline looking bizarrely like the face of a man wearing a top hat and monocle.

From out of the front of his belt floated a garish multicolored hoodie. The top was green, the shoulders were covered by a red stripe, the mid-back was light pink, and the very bottom was dark blue. From the recesses of the hood was a faceplate glowing faintly with a ghostly blue light, the contours of the reaching hand from Takeru's device forming a crude outline of a face near the top.

" **Eye…Bachiri Minaa! Kaigan: Lupin! King of Thieves! MY! DEAR! GANIMARD!** " exclaimed his buckle. The floating hoodie looped back and forth through the air a couple times before coming down on top of Takeru's shoulders, hard black armor forming over him in a flash.

"I'll be right back," he whispered, "Leave it to Ghost." Liss didn't know how he expected to go a second without being spotted in his hideous new outfit, but he hadn't taken two steps before he suddenly disappeared into thin air.

Liss peered into the room, trying to guess where he was but his cloak of invisibility was so strong even her crystal eye couldn't spot anything when she closed the other one and scanned the inside of the gallery. A minute later the gold hilt shifted and lifted straight through its solid display case.

But Liss looked up as she heard the faintest of creaks from the skylight and a slender, dark-haired woman in an emerald green unitard leaned through. Liss ducked into the shadows of the doorway, but balled a fist at what she had to be there for. A second later another girl in an orange unitard with a high collar leaned through too, and both of them took out aerosol cans and started covering the electronic eyes ringing the skylight with sprays of sticky white paste.

And there was no mistaking it: the girl in orange was the talkative teenager from the café.

The other woman stepped back from the skylight, then a second later dropped from the skylight, lowering down quickly on a rope attached to a harness around her torso. She snatched the exposed hilt out of the air, blew a playful kiss to the invisible intruder climbed back up the rope with almost superhuman speed.

"Wait!" Ghost yelled in surprise, grabbing the rope with his invisible hands.

Liss growled angrily and exploded out of cover. She jumped on top of one of the stands, knocking it over as she jumped for the rope. She vaguely noticed hearing a crash as the stand and whatever was on it hit the ground, but couldn't be bothered with that. That hilt had to be a key part of what END-Shocker wanted, and now that she knew for sure it was a weapon she didn't dare let them have it.

Her foot hit something invisible that was probably Ghost's shoulder and she used that extra height to jump and grab the loop of the rope as the woman in green hauled herself up. "Sorry!" Liss called down but pulled hard on the rope as she dragged herself up. She heard a yelp of surprise and saw the woman in green fall back against the skylight from the sudden tug on the rope connected to her harness. The woman gave Liss an irritated glare but shrugged out of the harness and ran off. Liss dragged herself up through the skylight and yelled, "Hold it!" as the two thieves ran for the edge of the building.

Ai glanced over her shoulder and actually stopped and turned around at Liss's yell. She gaped in astonishment, but it turned into a smile. "Lees! You came after the hilt too?! I knew it!" she squealed.

"Give that to me!" Liss demanded. "You have no idea how dangerous it is!"

The woman in green stopped at the edge of the roof. "There's a saying, isn't there? There's no honor among thieves."

"Hitomi! She came after it too, and she was just a little slower than us…we can probably use her!" Ai protested.

"I'm not a thief, I'm a Kamen Rider," Liss told them. "I can protect that a lot better."

But her words were drowned out by a roar of whipping blades and a helicopter rose into view, the other woman from the café at the controls. Hitomi, the woman in green, jumped inside and with a last resigned look over her shoulder, Ai jumped in too. The helicopter roared away, but as it banked away, Liss's Empress Card was in her hand.

* * *

Ai tossed the golden hilt up into the air, grinning like a demon. As she held out her hand to catch it, Hitomi reached out and caught the hilt instead, glaring back at her. Hitomi locked the hilt inside a heavy metallic briefcase. "Ai, don't play with something so important!"

"Ahhhhh, onee-saaaaan…we have it now, shouldn't we feel a little good about it?" Ai moaned.

"We can feel good about it when it's safe. I've already told you how dangerous this could be," Hitomi replied sharply.

"Maybe we should've let Lees have it," Ai suggested. "She's a Kamen Rider, maybe she _could_ protect it even better than us, right?"

"Ai," Rui gently put in as she started lowering the helicopter to a landing near the edges of town. "Maybe she was, but we actually had an escape plan and a place to take this so all those monsters can't find it. We couldn't let all that preparation go to waste on a whim, could we?"

The youngest of the three made a disappointed sound in her throat and just sat back to wait for the landing, which came with a soft jolt a minute later. Immediately Hitomi climbed out, clutching the briefcase and casting suspicious glances in every direction.

"Hitomi, where are we taking the treasure?" Ai asked. "Are you going to give it to Toshi to protect?" she went on, an impish smile on her young face.

Hitomi glowered in annoyance. "You know where we're taking it! And you know we can't give something this important to the _police_!" she exclaimed. It seemed a natural time for Ai to make some other joke or tease her with some other inane remark, but one didn't come. Hitomi and Rui turned around to see Ai looking deeply into the windshield of the van they'd left to drive to their next destination.

But Ai's reflection wasn't hers. Looking back was a man in dark blue armor, with a mask that had a grill-like silver visor and wide fans on the sides like a cobra's hood, the same as the image worked into the top of the staff he held in one hand.

Ai was already pivoting to run for all she was worth when the armored man came flying out of the windshield, not shattering the glass but _solidifying_ from inside it. She ducked low as she tried to break into a sprint but her attacker struck her hard and suddenly between the shoulders with his staff. Hitom passed the briefcase to Rui and was charging to her sister's rescue but stopped as the armored man stood up, one powerful arm clenched tight around her throat.

"You made me follow you all the way out here," he said a bit distantly, sounding if anything annoyed rather than angry. "How vexing."

Suddenly Hitomi came at him in a spinning kick, slamming the spike heel of her shoe into the base of his neck. He only lifted his cobra staff and swatted her to the ground with a blow to her stomach. "You might be a nice distraction sometime," he said idly. "But now, give me the hilt. Or I'll break her neck."

"Would you? Would you really?" Rui asked, shuffling subtly backwards, the briefcase clutched in her sculpted arms. For just a fraction of a second she looked past the attacker. "Killing a person is the greatest crime of them all."

"Then let me introduce myself," he said. "Kamen Rider Ouja, or maybe you heard of my old name…Takeshi Asakura?"

Ai had been starting to struggle free but froze as she heard that name. An evil Kamen Rider was dangerous enough, but that name…that name belonged to an unrepentant _killer_.

"Takeshi Asakura died," Rui replied.

"I did," Ouja agreed, tightening his grip on Ai's neck. "But at times like this it's hard for me to remember when I felt more _alive_."

Hitomi got to her knees, gritting her teeth in pain and anger. "Let her _go_!"

"Give me the hilt," Ouja replied.

Rui and Hitomi looked at each other and then at their younger sister caught in the evil Rider's grip. If they let the hilt fall into END-Shocker's hands, its power would be unstoppable. But if they didn't—

The roar of powerful engines interrupted them, and all eyes turned toward the chain link fence surrounding the landing pad. Through it they could see Tarock clad in her royal purple Empress armor and Ghost in his blinding Lupin Damashi, Tarock riding Shift Runner and Ghost on a sleek bike with the image of a unicorn worked into its fairing.

Both pulled back and ramped off a car parked at the edge of the fence to make a spectacular jump over it and screech to a stop between the sisters and Ouja.

"How vexing," Ouja murmured. He started bringing up his cobra staff to threaten Ai, but Ghost disappeared before his eyes, then Ouja grunted in surprise as something hit him and loosed his grip on Ai's neck enough for her to slip free and dash over to her sisters. Ouja growled, then laughed. "A pair of _heroes_ , huh?! This is even better!"

"Make sure they're all right! I'll take care of him!" Ghost said as he dismounted.

Ouja whipped three cards out of his belt buckle and slid all three of them into the top of his staff. " **Advent** ," it announced before three monsters stepped out of windshield just like he had: Venosnaker, the giant purple cobra Tarock had seen already, the strange magenta stingray from before, and finally a towering hulk covered in shiny silver armor and with the head of a rhinoceros, especially the vicious-looking yellow horn a good three feet long on its nose.

"Uh oh," Ghost whispered, but held out his hand and a long black rod with a blue gem on the tip appeared. " **Gan Gun Cane!** " droned his Driver. The three monsters charged him, Venosnaker coiling and pouncing through the air alongside the stingray while the rhino lowered its head and charged horn-first at Ghost. He flinched, seeming unsure of the power of his weapon, but swung it and the jewel at the top flew off on a long cord that wrapped around the stingray's tail and let him swing through the air and come down in a kick against Ouja's chest.

The evil Rider stumbled back but whirled around and whipped another card out of his belt and slipped it into his staff. " **Sword Vent**." A sword with a blade that looked like it was made out of a long, spiraling shell whipped down from the sky and into his waiting hand.

He was still spinning with the momentum of Ghost's kick when he slashed once, twice, three times across Ghost's chest and then dashed behind the already staggering Kamen Rider with serpentine speed and made another upward swing that caught Ghost between the shoulders and lifted him a foot of the ground with the force of the blow.

Ghost gasped in pain at Ouja's ferocious assault but disappeared from where he lay on the ground. Ouja let out a little laugh, and the three monsters he'd summoned swarmed toward him, Venosnaker on one side and thrashing its giant coils from side to side, the stingray cruising low on the other side with its stinger lowered and the rhino stomping along through the midde holding out his wicked horn.

Ghost cried out in pain as the rhino and stingray both hit him and shocked him visible again. He feebly held up his cane to defend himself but Ouja advanced through his monsters and sliced it to pieces with a swing of his sword.

* * *

Again his vision blurred. Kotaro Minami shut his eyes and sucked in a deep but painful breath. When he opened his eyes again the room he was chained from the ceiling of was back in focus, but so was the golden-masked face of his torturer, General Jak.

"Still haven't gotten your little treasure, Jak?" Kotaro sneered at him. "They know better than to make deals with types like you."

Jak scowled and jabbed the prisoner with his sword again. "The Dai Shuryou said he needs your blood, but he never said he needed _all_ of it," he growled, pulling back a reddened blade.

Again Kotaro collected himself before he could reply, but said, "You feel it too, don't you Jak?"

The masked villain scoffed and turned away. "Who needs a reason to hate Riders like you? And don't think stalling's going to help."

"Admit it," Kotaro gasped. "We've done this before, somehow. I know you, but I've never met you. We've fought before already…"

Jak angrily whirled around and stabbed him again. "You humans get more pathetic the more I see!" he yelled. "You think you can confuse me or weaken my conviction by telling me some worthless story about how we've fought before?"

He twisted his blade and Kotaro gasped in pain. "Even if we had, it doesn't matter. The future is the only thing that matters, and you, Kamen Rider…you don't have a future."

Kotaro panted where he hung off the ground, and as Jak walked away from him to continue awaiting the results of his ultimatum, he still couldn't shake the fuzzy feeling in the back of his mind that he had indeed fought this villain before, in another place and another time. And that somehow Jak knew it too, and had singled him out among all the Kamen Riders taking part in the battle.

But if he was right, how could such a thing be possible? Just how great was END-Shocker's power? Enough that elements of completely different worlds were brought together by their bid for conquest? And if it was, just what could even the Kamen Riders do to stand against such a threat…?

* * *

 **Sorry this took so long, and sorry for my promise that this chapter would reveal what the villains are after: the next chapter does, and to readers from the future, they originally went up back-to-back. This started out as one chapter but I felt I kept needing to add more content until it got so big that doing some plot surgery was the only way to keep it from getting too long and clunky with all the different fight scenes.**

 **Doing that gave me the chance to add a couple extra scenes to explain some non-fighty things, though, so I think in the end it worked out better than I'd intended. I hope you enjoyed.**

 **The monsters seen in this chapter are Next Ticker/Neck Sticker from Black RX (the one in the hallway as Ryugen and Drake were shooting sentouin) and Zombie Bat from V3 (the one that attacks Liss as she's climbing up to the next floor on a rope).**


	4. Chapter 4

**Kamen Rider Tarock Re-Dealt: All Rider War – The Devil's Nail**

 **Part 4**

The shadow of Ouja's three monsters seemed to slide together as they closed in on Ghost. The rhinoceros lowered his head and aimed his sword-like horn at Ghost's head. Venosnaker rose up, baring fangs menacingly.

"I guess this Eyecon isn't so strong in a fight," Ghost said. But then he pulled out one of his eyeball power items, this one black and wreathed in red flame designs. "I hope you're watching, tou-san," he whispered as he hit its switch.

" **Toucon…Boooooooost!** "

* * *

Rui clutched the briefcase protectively as Tarock walked closer to the three of them, probably not liking how Tarock's hand was clenched around the Arm of the Empire. "Please…I need you to give me that," Tarock said slowly, keeping her voice flat and trying to sound non-threatening. "I can protect it better than you can."

"We have a plan to deal with this we've been formulating for a week, ever since we found out Shocker was back and they'd be after this," Hitomi retorted. "What's _your_ plan to deal with it?"

"It looks like the bad guys already heard about _your_ plan!" said Tarock.

Ai gasped suddenly "Behind you!" she cried. If it had been any of the other sisters, Tarock would've been disappointed they thought she'd fall for such a basic trick.

But Ai had seemed interested in actually getting her help for their job, even before she'd actually shown up at the same place they were robbing.

The thought tugging at Tarock's fraying cynicism, she turned slightly and saw Ouja come somersaulting through the air at her. She aimed the Arm of the Empire at him and purple light blazed as a Quickening Ray fired from the tip and clipped his side, sending him into a crazy spin.

He landed on his back but somersaulted backward onto his feet, whipping out a card from his belt and slipping it into the top of his cobra staff. " **Steal Vent**."

"What?" Tarock asked. Her answer came a second later when the snake on top of the staff whipped thirty feet through the air and snatched Tarock's scepter in its teeth before sliding back to Ouja, who picked the weapon up curiously.

" _This_ is new," he chuckled darkly. Then he leveled it at Tarock and a bright purple beam flashed from the tip and clipped her chest. She gasped in pain but stayed on her feet and ran at Ouja who lit her stolen scepter into a steady beam and swung it like a scythe at her and the sisters.

Tarock planted her feet and thrust out her armored hands, catching the beam on her palms before she started pushing back, dragging it away from the sisters. Smoke started to rise from her hands but she sucked in a breath and didn't make another sound. Ouja laughed, "You want their treasure so badly you'd destroy your own body to save it?!"

She didn't answer with words. Instead she jerked her head in the direction of their getaway van. The thieves didn't need any prompting, running over and climbing in. When the engine roared to life Tarock's gauntleted hands flashed with energy and she _shoved_ Ouja's beam away from her, jerking her stolen scepter from his hand. He bent down to pick it up but as the van sped away from the landing pad Tarock was striding over to him, her smoldering fingers closing painfully slowly into fists.

Ouja aimed the Arm of the Empire and again purple light surged from it, forming into a group of armored warriors. They rushed Tarock, stabbing with knives and spears at her shoulders and back. Light flashed from the orb in her Arc Driver as she brought one scarred fist over her head, then slammed it down on the ground. " **Dire Fate! Clash of Empires!** " exclaimed the Driver.

A wave of energy ripped from the ground where her fist smashed down, cracking the landing pad and tipping the helicopter over, its rotors splintering with a horrible screeching of metal.

* * *

The last of the glowing warriors finished shattering to bits in the air. The armor on her gauntlets was cracked from the force of her attack and her hands were trembling as she stomped closer to Ouja. He studied her for a few seconds before suddenly slipping to one side and raking his spiral sword across her side. While she staggered her ran in a circle and struck her again on the other side, sending sparks flying. She fell to her knees and Ouja came flying through the air, sword aimed at her head.

Then suddenly Tarock shot up and her boot flashed out in an arcing upward kick that connected with Ouja's chest as the tip of his sword skimmed the side of her mask. Cracks spread from the point of Tarock's kick and he went careening back with a strangled cry of surprise.

He hadn't even hit the ground before Tarock jumped and aimed her fist at his head. Ouja rolled away just before she could connect and was pelted by the shattered concrete. He looked over his shoulder to where his monsters were still storming around, trying to catch Ghost, whose armor had turned red and wore a pale green coat over it. He seemed to turn into a blur as the rhino monster charged with its horn, landing on top of Venosnaker's head and slashing across the surprised snake's face with a bizarre sword that had a pair of sunglasses worked into the crossbar.

The flying stingray flew up from behind him but again Ghost moved with blinding speed and somersaulted off Venosnaker's head over it. In midair he loaded another one of his eyeball power objects, one with bright pink accents along the edges, into a slot underneath the glasses on his sword. The blade was engulfed by a spiral of pink energy and it whirled through the air, striking the stingray to the ground. Then he weaved through the rhino and Venosnaker, boxing Ouja between himself and Tarock.

"Give it up," Tarock said quietly.

Ouja stood up, laughing. "I've never actually used this," he said, seeming to ignore the two of them. "But this is really a fight worth finishing."

He pulled another card out of his belt, one with a picture of a golden bird with a silver disc lodged in its middle. A heavy round disc shaped like a cobra's appeared on his left forearm, an extension forming on the front that with its red eyes and hanging fangs looked like the face of the snake. It flipped up slightly to reveal a slot that he whipped the card into.

" **Survive.** "

Immediately power seemed to erupt from Ouja's body, buffeting Tarock and Ghost. Thick triangular spikes like fangs sprouted along the edges of his shoulder plates and his mask expanded with two trails hanging down from the sides with golden stripes making it take on the look of a pharaoh's headdress. The front of his chestplate bulged and forced the shoulder portions apart, then a hissing snake's face split out from the bulge.

And he wasn't done. Ouja whipped another card from his belt and loaded it into the slot on his arm. " **Unite Vent**." The three monsters he'd summoned hovered into the air, and to Tarock and Ghost's horror so did their bikes. In a flash of light, Ouja wasn't their only problem…

* * *

Tarock looked up as a dark shape seemed to sprout from the ground, already knowing she'd hate what she saw. The monster was a disgusting synthesis of the three Ouja had summoned before; it had the armored torso and powerful arms of the rhinoceros monster, and long magenta wings sprouting from its back thanks to the stingray. Venosnaker's head rose from his shoulders, mouth open and fangs bared ready to fight, with its long tail whipping behind him looking like it could smash Tarock or Ghost in one blow.

But strangest of all were its feet, one with three small crooked metal legs coming from the bottom and a single giant hoof on the other with a stalk sprouting what looked like a tire from the back. The head of a metal horse, Shift Runner's in its animal form, stuck out of the front of the first foot and weakly shook back and forth. The head of the unicorn on the front of Ghost's bike stuck out of its hip on the other side.

"Genosurviver, **go** ," Ouja ordered, unrolling a barbed bullwhip. And the hideous combined monster charged at the two Riders in weird lurching stomps, but with enough force to gouge the ground three feet deep with every step. His serpentine head whipped back and forth, spewing streams of a glowing green venom that sizzled Tarock's greaves and burned holes in her cape as the two Riders scrambled away in different directions.

Ghost was loading another eyeball into his belt, but Tarock realized she'd already exhausted her arsenal. Her Empress Form was the upper limit of her power, she didn't have a hundred other options like it seemed all the local Riders did. But as Genosurviver scuttled her way, tearing up every inch of the ground near him with his malformed feet, she ran straight at him and went diving through a steaming wall of his venom-spray.

"FIGHTING FATE!" she screamed to ignore the pain of the green drops eating through her armor. Both fists glowed with power as she slammed into the monster's armored torso and knocked him back on his ugly feet. Fragments of asphalt filled the air as it tore up the street and a long, sharp one found a hole in the leg of Tarock's armor. She yelled in pain and surprise but limped after Genosurviver.

Suddenly its leg, the one Shift Runner was trapped inside, flash out and slammed into Tarock's body like a freight train. "Lisa!" Ghost shouted as she went flying across the street and smashing into the side of a concrete building with a CRUNCH. Her armor flickered as she slid down the wall and hit the ground but as her daze at being hit cleared she clenched her eyes shut inside her mask and focused even as she felt chunks of the road pelt her from Genosurviver storming over to finish her off.

Ghost came vaulting through the air, now wearing a red coat over his armor and wielding a hefty sword in each hand. He slashed across Genosurviver's wings and the awkward chimera-creature turned to face him. As soon as Tarock dragged herself to her feet and was about to join the fray when something CRACKED through the air and ripped through the armor on one leg. The pain was blinding enough but a second later she could feel something dig in like needles and seep something into her new wounds that started to burn.

With a flick of his wrist Ouja wrenched his whip free and then cracked it again, sinking the spikes into Tarock's midriff. She grabbed the coil and started pulling it free but Ouja jumped to the side and just pulled it even tighter. Sucking in a deep breath to drown out a scream, Tarock sank to her knees.

But she grabbed the cord of the whip, not seeming to notice as its spikes dug into the sides of her fingers, and yanked with all of her might. Ouja only staggered forward a step but it was enough for Tarock stand up and land a punch on his chest. It didn't crumple his armor like before he'd powered up, but for a second everything seemed to stop with the powerful reverberations that echoed up and down the street.

And Ouja brought down his empty hand on Tarock's neck in a vicious chop. She fell flat but Ouja wasn't done and kicked her with superhuman force that sent her flying through the air until his whip went taut and she was stopped in midair, the spikes digging into her skin before she slammed into the ground.

But still Tarock got up to keep fighting. Behind him she could hear Genosurviver stomping around and then shrieking in pain as Ghost managed to land a double blow with his swords. The venom in Tarock's wounds seemed to burn even more.

"Why do you keep fighting?" Ouja asked quietly. "You can't possibly save yourself now…you're way too weak. Tell me why."

"Because I did this all to prove I'm strong. To prove that I matter," Tarock croaked. But as she said that, through the haze of pain from all the damage she'd taken fighting Ouja and his freak monster sidekick, she realized how pathetic it sounded. Was that why Kamen Rider Black had risked his life against an army of monsters, had fought a duel to the death against a man who had once been like his brother? To prove to everyone who'd put him down that his life _mattered_? Was that why she'd assumed her own powers and kept them even though it meant most of an entire world would fear her for them, and kept facing worse and worse monsters because of it?

Of course not. "Because of people like _you_ ," Tarock snarled. "You don't deserve the kind of power you've got…I lost someone who couldn't defend herself to somebody like you once, who wanted her so they could get stronger and wipe out the world. I have to fight to stop people from exploiting their power, because I can't count on other people to do it for me."

Then all other sound seemed to stop as a slow clap came from behind Tarock. She looked over her shoulder and spotted a man in dark clothes, with a weird magenta box that she finally figured out was a camera dangling from around his neck. It was Tsukasa. His face had a few fresh bruises and cuts but his clothes were still immaculate. "Couldn't have said it better myself, Liss," he said, and she was more than a little surprised to hear someone say her name right. "Well, I could've, but why get into that now?"

And suddenly he charged Ouja, totally unarmed and unarmored. Ouja reached for his belt for a card but Tsukasa ran up and kicked his hand away, then ducked as Ouja swiped at his head with superhuman speed. Tsuskasa grabbed Ouja's other wrist, the one holding onto his whip that was still wrapped around Tarock, and slammed his knee into it and knocked the weapon out of his fingers.

Tarock painfully pulled the venomous spikes out of her skin one by one. As she did Genosurviver broke away from his fight with Ghost and lurched over to help the evil Rider. Tsukasa knocked Ouja down with a spinning kick to his chest, and as Ouja got to his knees he asked, in quiet menace, "Bastard…who are you?"

And Tsukasa looked up at Genosurviver looming over him, and laughed softly. "We're doing this again, huh? All right, one more time. I'm a passing through Kamen Rider…remember it. On your way back to Hell!"

He pulled open his coat, revealing his driver around his waist. He slapped a card inside and slide the buckle shut. " **Kamen Ride. Decade!** " Figures flashed out from it before then ringed together into Tsukas's body and forming the bright pink armor he had on before, a beacon on his forehead lighting up. He whisked another card out of a box hanging on the side of his belt just like Tarock had. "This might tickle a bit."

"What?"

He didn't answer, sliding the card into his buckle and closing it again. " **Final Form Ride. Ta-Ta-Ta-Tarock!** " it stuttered. The holes in Tarock's armor flowed over, but she yelled in surprise as she realized it wasn't repairing itself, it was expanding outward into a rectangular block around her! In a second she'd become a giant deck of cards!

Genosurviver had apparently seen enough. He reared back his head and spewed a shower of his venom at the three Kamen Riders, but suddenly Tarock split into a spiral of cards and spun wildly in the air intercepting the spray and deflecting it down the street. The cards folded together again and she rammed into Genosurviver's abdomen and knocking him on his back.

But then Ouja cracked his whip. Decade looked him up and down, unconcerned. "Oi, Takeru, go help Liss."

"What about you, Kadoya-san?" Ghost replied.

"If you know me you know I don't need help to take care of a nobody-Rider like this," Decade answered. Ghost looked at him questioningly for a second, then dashed away to help with the monster. "Now," Decade said, turning his attention Ouja. "How about one for an old traveling companion?"

He loaded a card into his belt, and locked it.

" **Form Ride. Ku-Ku-Ku-Kuuga!** "

* * *

Up the street Genosurviver had caught Tarock in his powerful hands and tried to crush the giant deck between them. Tarock split down the middle and pushed back against his grip. He started to rear back his serpent head to spew his venom straight down onto Tarock while she was trapped…

Suddenly a glistening arrow came shooting up and into Genosurviver's gaping mouth. His head whipped back and he let out a strangled hiss before tipping back and crashing hitting the ground with a crash. It was Ghost, now wearing a dark green hoodie over his armor and carrying his black bow. Genosurviver rolled onto his side suddenly and lashed out with his giant hoof and it was all Ghost could do to jump over it and land on the huge monster's ankle. He took aim at Genosurviver's mouth again as it opened to spray his venom…

…but nothing happened.

"Thank goodness," Ghost breathed, but in the next instant was thrown off as Genosurviver turned over and started dragging himself up again, seeming to grow even taller. He chased after Ghost and reared back to bite him when Tarock dove down and the snake's head crashed into her weird card-form instead, knocking her away with a clang. She looped around and came back then split in half and smashed herself together around Genosurviver's head. He let out an angry hiss that turned into a roar and swatted at the air with his giant, clumsy hands. She sped and away and he chased after Tarock as she flew down the street, snapping his ferocious jaws while she darted back and forth to avoid them.

Suddenly Genosurviver swung around and lashed his giant tail at Tarock who was about to divide herself in two, but the monster hit her card-body hard and sent the halves flying off in different directions. One slammed through a window and the other spun drunkenly through the air for a second before stabilizing.

The hybrid monstrosity crouched and awkwardly launched himself into the air after her, magenta wings flaring out from his back. Just before he could sink his fangs into her, a blue field of light suddenly formed above him and slammed him down into the ground. A crater formed underneath Genosurviver and a nearby building crunched and started to sag forward toward the spot where he'd hit.

Nearby stood Ghost, now sporting a bright blue hoodie over his armor with heavy orbs over his hands that hummed with power. The power pinning Genosurviver to the ground.

"Lisa," Ghost gasped with the effort of keeping the thrashing monster pinned. "If you've got some power to finish this off, now would be a good time for it!"

The two halves of the deck flew back together then split again into four portions. " **Cataclysm! Arr-JAE Shoot!** " An image of the emblem of her four suits appeared, one on each card: sword, cup, pentacle, and wand. Bombardments of these glowing symbols rained down on Genosurviver, exploding all over his metallic body. He let out a strangled hiss of pain but more and more of Tarock's symbols fell, leaving blackened craters on his body where they hit.

Finally Genosurviver contorted one last time and went up in a blast of fire. Tarock landed next to the character where he'd been and the giant deck flipped open to reveal Tarock in her Empress armor, and as she stepped from the frame it disappeared behind her.

"Are you okay, Lisa?" Ghost asked, gently cupping one shoulder with the orb on his hand.

"I'll live," she replied. "How's Decade doing? And how are those sisters doing?"

* * *

The barbed whip cracked through the air but Decade effortlessly jumped over it and the coil sliced through a streetlight that toppled to the ground and crashed down right next to an immobile Kamen Rider Ouja.

Decade didn't look anything like he had when he'd sent Ghost and Tarock away. He wore a shiny red chest plate, the same hue as the large round lenses in his back, below a pair of dull golden horns on the brow of his mask. He dusted his hands and charged Ouja, who tried to jump to his side but Decade seemed to know what he was doing in advance and suddenly jumped to the side and launching a sharp upward kick that caught Ouja on the chin.

With all his speed he followed with a spinning kick to Ouja's head and while the evil Rider was staggering threw a punch at Ouja's chest.

Suddenly Ouja's arm whipped up and he grabbed Decade by the wrist. He kicked Decade hard in the stomach and whipped hard at point-blank, the spikes on the whip dragging across his side and back, ripping into his armor.

"People like you really vex me," Ouja quietly growled.

"People like me?" Decade retorted, his voice still firm with his usual confidence.

"Yes, people like you," Ouja spat. "People who think they're so smart, so charismatic, so good at everything…they think they're better than me."

"They're right," Decade replied, unfazed. "They aren't homicidal maniacs."

" **I** know what real life is. And so do you, don't you? You go to different worlds, and what you're looking for whenever you get to a new one is whether it's a good place for you to die. We both live for fights…I'm just honest with myself."

Without warning Decade delivered a chop to the hand holding Ouja's wrist and kicked him away. "You want to fight, huh? Then let's fight!" Another card was in his hand.

" **Steal Vent** ," Ouja's gauntlet announced before the snake face decorating the front stretched out and sank its fangs into Decade's card and yanked it away. It wouldn't work with his system, of course, but Decade would be vulnerable for a second without it. Ouja couldn't help glancing down at what he'd stolen.

Unsurprisingly it was a card showing the mask of a Kamen Rider. The mask was a dark blue with a smooth silver mouthplate and thick black bars aligned in a row across the top, like the black bars across the chest.

Decade laughed a little laugh. "Kaito's still wondering where that is, I bet. Maybe I can capture the look on his face when he finds out who has it." Then he locked another card into his belt.

" **Form Ride. Kuuga Titan!** "

The lenses in his mask changed to a dark purple and thicker armor formed across his chest and shoulders. It was a dull grey in color with purple stripes running along the edges. Decade grabbed a rusty pipe laying on the street and in a flash it had become a wide-bladed sword at the touch of his powers.

Ouja regarded him more cautiously now, and started circling to his right, and Decade stepped cautiously to his own right keeping his opponent in his sights. Suddenly Ouja jumped high and came down almost on top of Decade, his spiked whip whirling through the air. This time it skimmed off Decade's heavier armor and Decade charged up to him and slammed the hilt of his weapon into Ouja's chin.

The evil Rider staggered and swung his whip furiously again and again at Decade who dodged around it and delivered a powerful spinning slash across Ouja's chest. A second later Ouja tried to come back with a kick at Decade's head but at the last second Decade leaned to the side and the kick hit nothing but air. Again Decade closed the distance between them and pummeled Ouja with a flurry of kicks and sword strokes until one slash lifted Ouja completely off the ground.

"What's happening…?" he gasped. "I'm supposed to be more powerful than ever."

"No," Decade flatly informed him. "Look at yourself."

Ouja did, holding up his hands in front of his face. Small flecks of his armor were dissolving away. "Your source of power's been destroyed, looks like. Even with that card you're just burning yourself out," Decade informed him.

But the evil Rider jumped up and cracked his whip angrily even as flecks of his armor eroded away even faster. "If I'm dying, then I'll die fighting!" he roared.

"I thought you'd say that," Decade replied. " **Attack Ride. Calamity Titan!** "

Ouja screamed in rage and ran at Decade with his whip flailing and Decade ran right at Ouja, sword held high. Ouja's whip clattered against Decade's armor and scarred the front with ragged gashes as they passed, but Decade's sword flashed out and raked across Ouja's middle as they passed each other. The evil Ride gasped as blood trickled out from the bottom of his mask and fell hard. After a second his armor finished completely dissolving, leaving nothing behind, not even a trace of Asakura's body.

"Next time, just look for your fights in Hell," Decade murmured.

* * *

Even with all the distance they'd put between themselves and the Riders' battle, the three sisters' van tipped forward and careened on three wheels into the right lane as a wave of massive force washed over them, shaking the ground and popping the glass from windows. Ai was tossed against Hitomi who clenched her fingers against the wheel as the van crunched down onto all fours again and she got it back under control.

"Rui," Hitomi finally breathed, "anything to report?"

The eldest sister opened the case and saw the gleaming golden hilt still inside, then closed and locked it again with a small smile of satisfaction on her lovely face. "It's here. Let's hurry to the drop."

"Onee-san…" Ai interrupted them, an uncertain quaver in her voice.

"I see it, Ai," Hitomi replied, stepping on the brake as the outline of a man standing in the middle of the road, arms akimbo, and she thought for sure she saw a sinister smirk on his face. "Get ready to jump and scatter, you two."

They both nodded their agreement. As the men held out his hands as if to catch the truck, which Hitomi had no doubt he could in fact do, she kicked open the door and jumped out of the van, Ai and Rui hurling themselves out their own doors and hitting the ground running. They started to charge off in different directions to split up anyone who might try to chase them.

But as Hitomi had also feared, their assailants had thought of that. A monster with a shiny black domed head surrounded by curved black spikes and long yellow tentacles unfolding from his body melted out of the ground in front of her. Before she could turn and run he threw up his tentacles and a crowd of men in black suits with white centipede designs covering their heads appear around her.

Rui gasped as a dark shape swung down from the building in front of her, a black-skinned monster with scores of ugly spider-like legs running across his shoulders and arms, but his body was covered in brightly-colored bulbs that looked exactly like…stained glass? She immediately turn and was about to toss the briefcase to Ai when another monster jumped out of the alley in front of her, clad in a grey military uniform but with the head of a black-furred wolf atop his shoulders, and a strange cage that looked like it was made of barbed wire around his head.

"Give that to me," said a voice over Rui's shoulder. Standing there was a tall, broad-shouldered man cropped blond hair and a sculpted face with a prominent lower jaw. There was a European cast to his features, and for a second Rui thought he looked a bit like what she could remember of her father. He didn't reach out and try to grab the briefcase or hurt her, instead seeming to let her stew in knowing the three of them were in his power.

"Who are you?" Rui asked in a whisper.

He cupped one hand over her shoulder and ran his fingers through her wavy hair. "I've had many names. For a long, long time I was called the Dai Shuryou…Now, I'm trying out 'Nikolai Maltus.' If you prefer something more grand, call me Kamen Rider Belial. Now give me that case."

Rui clutched it to her chest. "No."

"Have it your way. General Wolf, show that girl just how sharp those teeth of yours are. Luna, tear the other one to pieces," Maltus replied. The wolf monster started to reach inside his mouth with one hand, but Rui gasped in frustration and turned to thrust the briefcase into Maltus's arms. "Excellent…do you know what this is, girls?" he asked.

Hitomi scowled. The suit-clad monsters started to close in on her but Maltus waved them off and leaned a little closer, silently prompting her to answer his question. "Why should we tell you? You obviously already know…"

"Because I might have a place in my organization for a group of talented infiltrators like yourselves. Your odds of staying together would be a lot better if you showed a little honesty."

At that, Hitomi shut her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. Their team had never been one to give up, but they'd never had a squadron of kaijin to fight their way past before, and she had no doubt Nikolai Maltus was the most powerful of them all. "It's the hilt of the Satan Sabre. The prize possession of a cult called Gorgom. After the duel between their two champions—"

Maltus grinned. "Champions! Yes! Do you know what they were called?"

"…the Century Kings."

"Yes! Go on!"

The three sisters exchanged a quick, unsettled glance. Hitomi answered, "…when the duel between the Century Kings was settled, the winner would wield the Satan Sabre as his symbol of power as the ruler of the world."

"That's exactly right," Maltus replied with a less manic, but still sinister smile. "And you three are going to get to see that for yourselves."

* * *

Liss finished hauling a dented and tarnished Shift Runner out of the crater that had been Genosurviver's final resting place. It would take a lot of work to make it as intimidating as it had been before, but as long as it still ran like it always had, that would be enough for the moment.

"God damn it," she cursed. "Can all of you guys do stuff like that? I can't do anything like that, with the monsters and combining them and shit…"

"Just Mirror World Riders like, Ouja, I think," Takeru said, good-naturedly but a little tiredly. "I don't really know either, to be honest. We don't really run into each other except at times like this."

They both looked up at the sound of a motorcycle's engine growing closer and Liss couldn't help groaning at the thought of another fight so soon. Then it came into sight, and she recognized Tsukasa in his dark outfit and riding that weird bike of his with the pink bars on the fairing.

But as he rode closer the ground shook horribly and knocked Shift Runner's handlebars out of Liss's hands. She staggered back, trying to keep her balance and almost fell back down into the crater before it suddenly stopped. Something was rising about the city skyline, looking almost like small city itself made of numerous towers with the heads of screaming monsters boxes lining the edge. Lining the edges of the small flying island was a ring of what looked like bat wings flapping to keep it off the ground. As she watched another tower pushed its way up out of the middle of the little island, a shiny black obelisk, and at the top suddenly a bloodshot red eye opened, seeming to stare straight at Liss from miles away.

"My god…," she whispered. The others said nothing, just stopping and staring up at the island themselves. It climbed higher until they could see the bottom, and suddenly a red eye opened and stared straight at them from there too.

A bolt of fire jumped from the eye on the obelisk and arced through the air in their direction. Liss tried to force her body over and over to climb on Shift Runner and ride away, but something seemed to be holding her to the ground as the plume of fire got bigger and bigger until it seemed to fill the sky, stretching a hundred feet from side to side.

But just before she was blinded by the light of the fire it suddenly shrank, pulling itself into the shape of a winged man with a barbed tail before shrinking even more into a tiny fireball barely the size of Liss's fist. It landed in the middle of the three of them and then burst upward into the shape of a man.

He was handsome, but even though he greeted them with a dazzling smile Liss could tell not to trust him. "Greetings, Kamen Riders," he said without menace.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Nikolai Maltus, and you," he said, pointing at Liss, "Are Liss Decker. And you have something very important to me."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh, don't mistake me for one of those pitiful teachers or Arcana you were able to fool so easily," he scoffed. "Give me that piece of metal you're hiding. You'll live a lot longer."

Liss doubted that "a lot longer" was much longer than the alternative at all, but she and another Kamen Rider who seemed a lot farther along in his powers than she was had just barely fought off Genosurviver. After what she'd seen with this character's entrance, she had a feeling he was even more dangerous. And she could feel her legs shaking a little from all the energy she'd been using to fight already.

But if his power was so great she couldn't possibly beat him, wouldn't it also be so great she had no chance of escaping? She thought about what Joe had told her when he'd given her the piece of metal; she wasn't the first of her kind, and maybe sometimes patience was the answer.

Patience. Living to fight another day and finding a way to beat an unbeatable enemy.

She fished the metal out of her pocket. Maltus held out a beefy hand expectantly.

"Lisa, don't do it!" Takeru exclaimed. "Didn't you say before—"

And Liss flipped the metal straight up into the air.

Maltus gasped in surprise and flew up off the ground to snatch it out of the air with ease, but by the time it was in his hand Liss, Takeru and Tsukasa was speeding away on their bikes down three different streets. He could chase down one and eliminate them, and Tsukasa Kadoya was a particularly tempting possibility, the arrogant little snot.

But he had all the pieces of the Satan Sabre. Reuniting them all was the important thing now. He couldn't take the risk of losing track of a piece when he was this close. And in his hands, a weapon of evil like that would be even more devastating than Gorgom had ever imagined…

* * *

 **There we have it, the purpose of the pieces END-Shocker's been trying to find and our primary villain. For the curious the kaijin seen in this chapter were the Luna Dopant and his army of Masquerade Dopants from W, Spider Fangire from Kiva, and General Wolf from Stronger. He was reaching into his mouth because his main attack is to pull out his dentures and throw them like grenades. Seriously. Hope you enjoyed!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Kamen Rider Tarock Re-Dealt: All Rider War – The Devil's Nail**

 **Part 5**

It was the moment they'd been fighting for, yet dreading.

The doors slammed and locked shut ominously behind them as the last of END-Shocker's elite members finished filing into the meeting hall, a wave of ghostly power passing inward from the doors and through the bodies of each of the officers. They were the most evil men their world had ever seen, and for some of them that wasn't this world. Yet all of them shivered involuntarily at the chill at the bodiless terror the wave seemed to embody as it drifted through them.

Then there was a flash of red and black power, and on the circular stage in the middle of the room appeared a massive, imposing man. His chiseled good looks were mesmerizing, but they were _too_ sleek, _too_ perfect. Like they only could've been the result of someone of massive arrogance creating a face of perfection to intimidate whoever they met.

He was Nikolai Maltus.

"My loyal! My elite! I am here!" he said with a thundering laugh. The villains stood and cheered, clapping and waving their weapons in the air. Maltus grinned darkly, drinking it all in. "And you have much to be proud of yourselves, loyal commandants! Your search has uncovered the pieces of the Satan Sabre, a key to ultimate darkness! And soon it will be whole again, consecrated by the blood of a Century King himself!...Where is our esteemed General who captured the sacrifice?"

"Sire, Jak has been personally standing guard over his prisoner ever since," someone in the crowd answered.

"Ah, and who knows he's done that, but has no such accomplishment to brag of themselves?" Maltus replied.

Silence descended over the room. "I ask again, my _elite_ , the great officers of END-Shocker, who else has shown initiative like General Jak's and personally seen to the defeat and capture of one our greatest foes?" Maltus pressed. None of the other villains said a word. What could they possibly say to justify themselves to such an immortal evil as him, the Dai Shuryou?

"Let me make this abundantly clear: such inaction will no longer be tolerated!" Maltus thundered. "Places of honor in the world we're making will only go to the worthy! You were not freed from the depths of Hell just to amuse me!"

"What would you have us do then, Dai Shuryou?" asked a bearded man in medieval armor, wearing a helmet embossed with image of a scorpion on top of it. "It's as you've said, all the pieces of the Satan Sabre have been recovered. What more is there for us to do?"

Maltus rose to his full height and surveyed the room. Faces human and inhuman stared back at him, none of them daring to say a word. "Doktor G, and all of the resto of you, it's not enough to use the blood to restore that weapon, it must be done at a perfect celestial conjunction. The exact eclipse that the Century Kings were born under." The villains exchanged uncertain glances with one another. Was his power so awesome that he could truly cause such a thing to happen before its time? "I will have to gather my strength," Maltus went on. "Until then, all of you are to defend the citadel, and the Satan Sabre, with your _lives_. I'm the one who gave them back to you. And don't doubt for a second I can't take them back again."

* * *

Shift Runner's engine sputtered frighteningly and the bike finally slid to a stop, all signs of life gone. Apparently it had been more damaged after being blasted out of Genosurviver than she thought.

Liss looked over her shoulder in worry, but saw no monsters or supervillains coming up behind her. Letting out a sigh of relief she looked around for a place with some cover where she could see about trying to get it running again.

Liss walked it over to an underpass below a concrete bridge, but quickly saw she wasn't the only one who'd thought of hiding out underneath it. Huddling against the walls were a group of frightened people in ragged, dirty clothes. They all looked up with fear as they saw Liss coming, but when she stopped and they saw she probably wasn't going to attack them, they only looked a little less scared.

But then someone else looked up after he finished tying off a bloody bandage on another man's arm. It was that older man who handed out all the orders at the big meeting with all the Kamen Riders, with the intense stare that had made her believe he'd seen more shit than any of the rest of them. Hongou, hadn't it been?

"Take it easy, Hayato," he said quietly to the injured man. "We're just lucky it wasn't worse."

"Give me half an hour, I'll be back on my feet," the other man gasped.

"You're a Kamen Rider, old friend," Hongou replied and patted him on the shoulder, which made Hayato wince despite what he'd just said, but he hid it quickly. "You've already done more than any man should be asked to do."

Liss cleared her throat. "You guys mind if I come in there and get my bike running again out of sight?"

"You're that American Rider that Kisaragi found," Hongou said, not really answering her. "How did you get separated from the rest of your squad?"

She walked her bike past him and then crouched by the side, took off her duster and riding gloves and replaced a few wires that had come loose. "Well, Kotaro told me to go after this monster who stole a piece of metal, since he figured that was what all the other monsters were trying to steal," Liss explained.

Hongou gave her a penetrating look. "Did you get that piece of metal?"

"Yeah, I did—"

"Good" Hongou said, sighing tiredly. "Let me see it."

Someone gasped as a massive shape flew over the bridge, letting out an angry sound halfway between a crow's caw and two pieces of glass scraping together. The people underneath the bridge whimpered and clung to each other, and Liss stopped in the middle of repairing Shifting Runner, as they waited for the shadow to pass. After a few painfully slow seconds another caw came, farther away, and the people let out soft sights of relief.

"They're getting more numerous," Hayato murmured.

Hongou didn't respond to him, moving his eyes back to Liss instead. "Let me see that metal you found."

"…I don't have it anymore," Liss admitted. "I threw it away as a distraction so the other Riders could get away."

Hongou's face hardened until he almost looked like he was formed out of rock. "You… _threw it away_? What the hell were you trying to get away from that you just threw away something so valuable?"

Liss turned around to face him, pausing as she was taping some casing on the back of her bike securely down again. "Some bad guy. Kamen Rider…Belial, I think he said he was called? Look, I'm sorry, I don't know what the local villains are like. But we were in no shape to fight him after what we were just through, and I've been in situations like that…we can get that back after we have a chance to catch our breath. What good would getting ourselves killed in a fight we couldn't win do?"

"You've responded to a lot of things I haven't even said," Hongou pointed out.

Liss nodded absently while she held the case where it needed to be and tore off the last piece of duct tape before it held steady this time. She _had_ given a lot of answers to Hongou for questions he hadn't even asked, justifying herself…to an _authority figure_. What the hell had happened to her?

She studied Hongou carefully, looking for any kind of reaction to what she'd said. Maybe to tell her it was all right, and they always won out in the end, and thinking of innocent lives was what she was _supposed_ to do in a situation like that. Even to tell her that she was an idiot who'd done the exact wrong thing, which at least would be like what she'd be used to hear from _authority figures_. But his face was totally impassive, as if he was staring and waiting for _her_ to betray something for _him_ to react to.

Instead he walked to the far edge of the underpass and got out a sleek but aged motorcycle that might once had been white but was now forever stained a light brown after being splattered with mud. "Hongou, where are you going?" Hayato croaked from where he was sitting.

Despite its obvious age the bike came to life immediately when it was started and when Hongou revved the accelerator it gave an angry roar that put Shift Runner's to shame. He turned to Hayato. "I'm going to try to avert a disaster."

"Your body's a wreck."

"I know," Hongou replied. "I've fought so many battles I don't even remember most of them anymore. How many times was it Shocker here, Shocker in Switzerland, Shocker in Mexico…How many times was it Government of Darkness in the Philippines? How many times was it Garanda? Was there ever any difference between them?"

"Don't do this," Hayato warned. "Let some of the other Riders know."

For the first time since Liss had first seen him, a faint smile formed on Hongou's weathered face. "I know. Nobody would hold it against me; I made my contribution already. I could just go and leave this alone." Then he revved his bike's engine. "But I can't, none of us can. This is what the life means."

And he sped away on his bike. Liss stood there for a second, then jumped on the back of Shift Runner and to her relief it started up at her touch like it always had. She drove down the road after Hongou, but for some reason she made sure she just stayed a couple hundred feet behind him. Wanting to see where he was going, what he was going to do. He just drove along empty streets for a while, then turned up a large hill.

Liss didn't have to figure out why. She could see the weird floating island she'd seen before, with the glowing obelisk sticking out of the castle in the middle starting to drift past overhead. As they climbed higher onto the hill Liss could see the path it had taken over the city, and the buildings and streets its shadow passed over seemed more grey, more inhospitable somehow. Would that spread even faster thanks to her soon, giving up piece of that villain's ultimate weapon…?

But she was interrupted as Hongou revved his bike's engine again and sped away toward a parking garage. Liss steered after him, putting on speed to make up for the distance she'd left between them earlier.

When she cleared the entrance Hongou was nowhere in sight, but she could still hear the sound of his engine a little above her and she had an idea what he had in mind. Recklessly Liss gunned Shift Runner's motor and went after him, skidding along curves as she went up the central ramp so Hongou didn't leave her behind. After two floors she caught sight of him again, but he wasn't the weathered man she'd seen before. Now he wore a black undersuit with silver streaks running up his arms and legs to gloves and boots of the same bright color. Thick green armor clung to his chest, and he wore a green mask with bulbous red eyes, a silver mouthplate, and a pair of insect-like antennae that bounced back and forth with the jolts of his ride. Around his waist was a belt with a bulbous buckle housing a turbine blade that spin blindingly fast with the rush of air from his speed. Finally fluttering behind him as he rode was a long red muffler around his neck.

If he was suiting up, it was probably time for her to do the same. " **Empress! Major!** " called her Arc Driver once again, transforming her into Kamen Rider Tarock as she made the final turn onto the roof behind Hongou.

He'd stopped at the edge of the roof as the floating castle passed, not too far in the distance, and was probably planning to jump to it. It would take perfect timing, but she a feeling their machines could make it.

"So you're coming to," he said over his shoulder without turning around.

"You think you're gonna take on every single bad guy in there by yourself?" Tarock replied.

"If that's what it takes." The island came closer and he revved his bike then ran at full speed for the concrete barrier at the edge, crashing through it. In midair stubby wings sprouted from the sides of his bike and he went into a controlled glide.

Shaking her head, Tarock drove after him, pulling back on her handlebars and ramping Shift Runner off a sloped piece of debris. She sailed through the air, and then came down straight toward a wall in the side of the weird floating castle…

* * *

Shift Runner smashed through the wall like a wrecking ball, a rock smacking into the side of her head and almost knocking her off her bike, which skidded crazily along the ground for a few feet before she recovered enough to pull to a stop.

As she got her bearings she saw her predecessor come gliding over the wall with his motorcycle's wings, then it popped open a drag chute from behind that slowed its descent and let him land gracefully, skidding stylishly to a stop with an ease that conveyed years of practice at everything they'd just done.

"That was amazing," Tarock said. He just shrugged and jumped down from his bike. "Hey…what do I call you? Like, what Kamen Rider are you?"

"What Kamen Rider am I…?"

"Well, like I'm Tarock, and back there I met Decade and Ghost, and Kotaro was Black."

He just shrugged again. "I was doing this before they needed all those different names. When they had to tell us apart, I was One and Hayato was Two."

"…I can't just call you 'One'," Tarock replied.

"Why do you need to call me anything? Who else will you be calling to?"

"Black, hopefully!" Tarock exclaimed in exasperation, but sucked in a breath to collect herself. "Look, if you were the first one, how about I just call you plain 'Kamen Rider'?"

He shrugged one more time. "If that helps. Now get ready to fight your way through those sentoin!"

"YEEEEE!" shrieked a dozen voices and twice as many figures in bone-patterned black unitards and ski masks like she'd seen before. In a second the Arm of the Empire had flashed into her hand, the massive gem on the scepter flaring with Tarock's power. She swung it in a powerful arc and a wave of purple energy formed behind it that lashed out and knocked down the first wave of her masked attackers.

More of the masked sentoin just charged right over the bodies of their allies, paying no attention to the masked fighters they stomped right on top of to get to Tarock. She slammed her weapon into the chest of the first one to get close enough and a pulse of purple light sent him flying backward.

But then five more jumped on her at once and grabbed her by the arms. Three more tackled her legs and squeezed them together. Tarock reeled around underneath them as even more came running out of the doors into the courtyard and jumped at Tarock too. She growled in annoyance and jumped high and spun in midair, shaking them off her body with superhuman power, and a burst of force from her scepter scattered them to all corners of the courtyard like black missiles.

As soon as she landed even more sentoin came charging at her over the bodies of the ones she'd just defeated. This time she knew better than to give them the chance to swarm her, and ran for the other wall then whipped around and fired a Quickening Ray from her scepter down at the ground, tearing up a sheet of rock that formed a wall between them and pushed the masked minions away from her.

She risked a glance over one shoulder and saw Kamen Rider dodging back and forth between groups of sentoin, who threw fast punches and made quick tackles at him but came at him in disorganized waves, letting Kamen Rider effortlessly jump back as one launched a kick at him and have plenty of time to dodge as another one screeched and threw a punch at his head. Kamen Rider grabbed the arm over his shoulder and flipped his attacker onto the ground then sent him skidding across the courtyard and bowling over three more of the masked men.

Another one was about to jump over the wall Tarock had ripped up with her last blast but as he screeched and came down, she pointed her scepter at him and as his chest crashed into it a pulse of purple light erupted from it and sent him flying backward to crash into another two who'd managed to climb up the wall. She aimed the Arm of the Empire and charged it again, purple-clad warriors forming from its energy and charging over Tarock's wall and pushing back against the END-Shocker troops.

Tarock looked around to see if any more of them were coming, but instead she saw Kamen Rider holding two masked minions over his head. He jumped a good forty feet into the air and spun around at incredible speed. " **Rider Tailspin…SHOOT!** " he yelled and threw the minions into a crowd of more them so hard a fiery explosion went up and consumed them all. As soon as he landed he paused for a second, then ran over to a door leading out of the courtyard, turned to look over his shoulder and waved quickly for Tarock to follow. She didn't need a second invitation.

They ran up a flight of stairs, Kamen Rider stopping at each landing for a second and the antennae on his mask quivering lightly. After three stops Tarock asked, "Do you know where we're going? Have you been here before?"

"God…it seems like it was yesterday I was in a new Shocker fort every week. But I've never been inside this one, no. I can feel the King Stone somewhere not too far away, though. It's weak…we'd better hurry."

Tarock just nodded and ran up the stairs after him.

* * *

As his vision cleared again for a minute, Minami Kotaro gazed out the window from the metal frame where he was chained up, and saw the sky blacken as something started to move in front of the sun.

He had a feeling that whatever was going on, it had something to do with him.

And considering where he was trapped, he didn't like the implications.

Before his vision started to blur again he looked up into the golden mask of General Jak, who gave Kotaro another whack in the ribs. "Don't sleep through the ceremony, Rider. It's in your honor," Jak laughed.

"You're enjoying this aren't you?" Kotaro gasped. "I've never even met you."

"No, you haven't, have you?" Jak said, his voice growing a bit distant. "But you're the kind of miserable do-gooder I would've enjoyed fighting if I had."

"What is it about me…and the rest of them like me, that makes you hate us so **much**?" Kotaro said through cracked, dry lips. "Has there never been anything, any **one** you thought was worth protecting?"

Jak slammed the hilt of his massive sword into Kotaro's midriff, making him wheeze in pain and cough up a gob of blood. "Crisis Empire was made up of people from a dying world! Your kind have always just taken your planet and its resources for granted, we were finally going to live with it the way you always should've! A pitiful worm like you would've been the one who had the job of polishing my armor."

"I see," Kotaro replied simply.

Again Jak hit him in the stomach with the pommel of his sword. "You see nothing," Jak snarled.

"But _I_ see everything, General," echoed a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once, and General Jak immediately froze and bowed in deference. "Don't become so caught up in your righteous sentiments you kill our subject before his blood can restore my weapon."

Kotaro grimaced. "That weapon isn't yours. It belongs to the Century Kings, and even they shouldn't have such a thing."

The voice laughed. "I'm sure it'll find me a kindred soul, Minami-san."

Then Kotaro's strength gave out and his world went as black as his armor.

* * *

Two Riders had managed to get through the fortress's defenses, it seemed. They thought they'd managed to evade the fortress's security as they weaved through the many halls toward the front of the structure, just because they'd evaded a few patrols of pitiful sentoin.

For a second the Arm of the Empire quivered faintly in Tarock's hand and a chill slipped up her arm to her spine. She looked up at Kamen Rider as he stopped at a door, letting his senses play over what was just beyond as he had before, then flicking it quietly open and starting down a hallway deeper into the fortress. If he could sense where Kotaro was from the other side of the building, he had to have noticed it too, right?

They were being followed.

He stopped at one corner and peered at a wide metal door with two sentoin, but unlike the others the sides of their shirts were red with a thin black stripe in the middle, just like the design on the legs of their pants. "Who are those guys?" Tarock whispered.

"Elite sentoin," Kamen Rider replied.

"They tough?"

"No," he answered her. "Not if you know what you're doing. But for them to be put on guard duty, something very important must be in there."

"Can you sense Black in there?"

"No," Kamen Rider answered. "I lost the sense of his King Stone a minute ago."

"So we need to fight past them, then," Tarock said. "Well, let's—"

"And ME," said a dry voice from behind them. The two Riders looked behind them to see an aged man in an immaculate white suit and black cape. His silvery hair hung past his shoulders, and despite his obvious advanced years there was a cold hatred in his eyes seemed strangely familiar to Tarock.

It didn't seem to be the case for Kamen Rider, though, who obviously recognized this man from the cold tone his voice took. "Shinigami Hakase…so he brought you back again."

"Hongou Takeshi…our duel resumes," the man said, and Tarock had to stop and stare at him. His features were withered but there was a cast to the shape his face, his jaw, his height…she would swear she'd seen someone that reminded her of this man sometime not that long ago.

"You know how it's ended before," Kamen Rider said.

"It's what the Dai Shuryou commands."

Kamen Rider leaned back and raised his arms, going into a fighting stance. "Get in there, save Minami," he told Tarock.

"What about you?"

"We've fought before, this is just one more time."

Shinigami clenched his fists, then let out a piercing shriek as the skin on his face split down the middle as a conical head covered in rubbery white flesh, while hands grew together and started to extend outward into sharp-tipped tentacles, suction cup already peeling open on the inside skin. He was starting to look like a giant white squid.

"GO!" Part of Tarock wanted to contradict him, say that she needed to stay and help him, that at his age he had no business fighting monsters. But as Shinigami seemed to explode, completely transformed into a shrieking rubbery squid monster, she bolted for the guarded doors. Maybe he was the oldest among them, but he'd clearly never stopped being there to fight whenever he was needed. How long had he been a warrior, and how long _would_ he go on being a warrior?

She had a feeling it would be until something finally hit him so hard he couldn't get back up…

"Die, Hongou Takeshi!" the monster screeched.

"We'll see, Ikadevil," Kamen Rider replied in a whisper.

"YEEEE!" And then there was no more time for Tarock to think about it as the two sentoin flung themselves at Tarock, who easily caught them out of the air in one arm each, then spun and threw them aside without even going for her weapon. Then she lowered her shoulder and smashed through the doors they'd been guarding.

* * *

And what she saw on the other side wasn't at all what she'd been expecting.

Prisoners were being kept there, but it took all of a second to be sure that none of them was Minami Kotaro. Instead, hanging from the walls left, right and center were the three women in catsuits who'd interrupted Tarock and Ghost's own attempt to steal the hilt of the Satan Sabre.

"…what are _you_ doing here?" Tarock blurted out before she could stop herself.

Not seeming to hear her at all, Ai, the youngest sister in a bright orange catsuit, gasped in excitement before her face lit up. "Lees! You came to break us out! _Now_ do you two trust her?"

Tarock reached up and wrenched the restraints on Ai's hands free. "Do you three know where any other prisoners are being kept? Like an older guy, in a white jacket? Maybe a silver belt buckle with a big red jewel in it?"

"I saw a prisoner like that," said Rui, the oldest. Behind her mask, Liss gulped a little at the wavy-haired thief's mature beauty. "Two levels up, wasn't it Hitomi?"

"Yes, two levels up," replied the third sister. "On the northwest side."

Tarock looked around. "Which way is that?"

Ai jumped down, then turned around and jumped for a ledge up on the wall that she grabbed and hauled herself up. "Let's just show you!" she said over her shoulder to Tarock with a grin.

"Ai!" Hitomi hissed in irritation. "Come down from there!"

And for a few seconds Ai looked down at her older sisters, but then stuck out her tongue and pulled down one eyelid as she did. "Hey, Lees! What are you waiting for? You can make a jump like this, can't you?"

"Like this? I could make it with one leg tied."

"Are you going to try it that way?" Ai called teasingly.

"No, that'd be dumb," Tarock replied. As she was about to jump to the ledge after Ai, Hitomi grabbed her by the arm. "What? I'm in kind of a hurry here."

Hitomi whispered to her, "Please keep an eye on our sister. She still has a lot to learn about restraint."

"Do I seem like the restrained type to you?" Tarock asked incredulously. "And what are you two gonna do?"

But that made Hitomi smirk a little. "No, you seem like someone who's learned at least a little about turning no restraint into a strength. Maybe if she watches you, Ai will get to learn a little bit about that. "

"LEES! Are you coming or what?" Ai called, stamping the ledge with her high-heeled foot. She looked back at Hitomi and Rui, but the two elder thieves were already slinking out the door Tarock had opened for them, and creeping over the bodies of the two sentoin she'd knocked out. Beyond the door she could see Kamen Rider flipping a switch on the side of his belt and grabbing one of the white tentacles of the squid-monster wrapped around his throat, then slowly yanking himself free. He grabbed the squid-monster by its rubbery shoulders and flipped it over his head, shaking the wall as the monster crashed into it.

And then Tarock jumped for the ledge Ai was on, easily spotting the narrow ventilation tunnel that Ai had in mind for their trip up to the level where they were keeping Kotaro. Another superpowered leap took her to that height and she easily smashed the cover over with her armored fist. Then, shoulder armor scraping the sides of the narrow shaft, she crawled in, smirking behind her mask as Ai called after her to wait up.

* * *

A few minutes of crawling later Ai peered down through another grating and saw another door like the one she and her sisters had been kept behind. Two of the red-and-black-clad sentoin stood on each side instead of just one.

"So Kotaro's in there," Tarock mused quietly. "I can take four of those guys, but I wonder if there's somebody else guarding a prisoner like him." She looked down the shaft again at another metal grating blocking entrance into the room. It was something strong, exactly to keep intruders from getting in that way, Tarock was sure. She was also sure she had enough firepower to get through, but not without making so much noise the guards would know something was happening. "Thanks for showing me the way. You guys find some way off here, okay?"

She pulled the Arm of the Empire off her belt, and saw Ai staring at the massive purple jewel on its tip. "Awesome…how much is that worth? Is that real gold?" Tarock cautiously pulled her hand back.

Tarock gripped the grating in front of her. "I'm too attached to think about selling it," she said, then twisted the grating so it fell and pushed herself so she fell headfirst down after it, twisting herself to land in a crouch next to it in front of the surprised sentoin.

The young Rider wasted no time, immediately leveling the scepter at them. An arcing ray of purple light jumped from the tip and slammed into all of them and knocked them against the double doors they'd been guarding. The doors groaned and one sagged on its hinges, and Tarock charged it with her shoulder, knocking it off completely. She somersaulted with her momentum into the room, and as soon as she landed on her feet faced a gleaming steel blade in front of her face.

It was held in the gauntleted hand of a man in a black cloak, wearing red and gold armor and a shining golden mask. There was no doubt, it was the one who'd projected that image in the sky that he'd captured Kotaro, or Kamen Rider Black. It was General Jak. Behind him, chained to the wall, was a battered and bloodied Minami Kotaro, head hanging forward as if unconscious.

The next thing Tarock knew there was a sound of clashing metal and she'd been knocked on her back by his sword. He charged and slashed his weapon straight down at Tarock who desperately raised the Arm of the Empire and blocked Jak's attack on the handle of the scepter. Sparks went up and Tarock managed to roll onto her side and kick Jak's legs out from under him.

He was scrambling to get his feet when Tarock yelled and brought her scepter over her head, the jewel erupting with power. She swung it at Jak who tried to raise his sword to block it, but the Arm of the Empire's energy exploded as it hit Jak's weapon. Everything seemed to slow down for a second as Jak's sword exploded, the biggest hunk of its shining blade spinning through the air until it lodged in the ceiling. Jak himself went flying backward until he slammed into the wall with a sickening SMACK. He slid down and after a second tried to push himself back up, resting on shaking arms. Tarock pointed her weapon at him, the gem glowing warningly with energy, but General Jak tried to grab her arm, clearly determined to fight to the end.

Tarock kicked him off and made a sound of disgust. "You guys should learn when to quit."

"Did _you_ quit the odds when the odds were against you for the first time?" Jak snarled back. "Dai Shuryou!" he called out, gazing out a small window to the sun that was more than halfway darkened by then. "My service has been faithful, give me the strength to smite your enemies!"

A snide, thundering laugh seemed to come from the walls themselves at his desperate request, then a powerful voice answered. Immediately Tarock recognized it as the voice of Nikolai Maltus.

"You've been eager to serve, General! You've earned a measure of respect for that, and perhaps you've earned a measure of power! But if you fail, your suffering will be unending…"

" **Dire Fate! Imperial—** " Tarock's Arc Driver started to way before a cloud of fiery energy lanced through the ceiling and covered General Jak and blasted her away as her scepter connected with it. From inside she could hear Jak screaming in agony, jerking back and forth as the power surrounding him filled his body, changing it into something worse.

"Arise, Jak Medora!" Maltus's voice announced. Finally the energy around General Jak disappeared, fading away into small puffs of light, and General Jak stood up. Now his entire body was covered in golden armor, but a dull, unimpressive color, looking perhaps intended instead for practicality. Part of his mask was a coal-like grey, as if burnt or scarred by the process that had just transformed him, and sticking out of the sides of his head now were a pair of tall bull-like horns. Sparks of green power jumped off the tips every few seconds.

Then without a word he turned to face Tarock and slammed his gigantic fist into her chest.

* * *

Levels below, Kamen Rider turned and launched another kick that dented the squid-monster's rubbery side. As Ikadevil staggered with the impact of the powerful blow, Kamen Rider spun with his momentum, went into a crouch and launched himself at the monster, one fist outstretched.

 **"RIIIIDEEERRR…PUUUUUNNNCCHHH!"** he yelled at the top of his lungs as his blow landed on Ikadevil's cone-shaped head. A satisfying *CRUNCH* echoed down the hall and Ikadevil was knocked off his feet. The monster sailed through the air.

But then in just a second he stood back up and the shape of Kamen Rider's fist popped back out. Two tentacles whipped over his shoulders and pounded Kamen Rider's chest. He fell back but somersaulted as he hit the ground. As he was getting up the pair of tentacles lashed out again, and Kamen Rider hesitated just a second too long, all the abuse his body had taken over the years slowing his reflexes just enough one tentacle wrapped around his neck and the other one around his waist.

"You thought that was still my weak spot," Ikadevil said and shook with a monstrous, chattering laughter. Tiny metal hooks slipped out of the suction cups and bit into Kamen Rider's body. Electricity surged through the hooks and Kamen Rider's body jerked horrifically suddenly to his left, arms flailing once, hitting nothing but air.

It had been decades since he'd been a human, but even still, Kamen Rider knew he was past his prime. The circuits and servos under his skin spasmed again as Ikadevil sent another jolt racing through his body. His eyes buzzed with static and everything faded into blurred pixels for a second until his optic relays managed to correct themselves.

He'd fought Ikadevil before, but this time the mechanisms in his arms strained with a sound he could almost hear as he tried to pull himself free of the monster's tentacles. The hooks in his body started tingling again, and before his body had a chance to spasm again Kamen Rider reached for his belt and grabbed a knob on the side of his belt. " **Rider Power…ON!** " he yelled, and pulled it 180 degrees.

Immediately his body shook once then went limp as most of his stored energy was channeled into one incredible burst outward. Kamen Rider's power surged through Ikadevil's hooked tentacles. Small black bumps formed all over them and then exploded. Ikadevil screamed in pain as the limbs were blown off his shoulders.

Kamen Rider leaned on the wall for just a second to try to steady himself. Ikadevil was hurt, but he wasn't helpless. These Shocker monstrosities were still a danger until their burnt remains were scattered all over the ground.

And then Ikadevil yelled and charged him, proving that belief. Kamen Rider crouched and jumped over his head with nowhere near the speed or height he could've managed normally, but the rush of air around him, and through the turbine in his belt…he gave a quiet sigh as his strength slowly returned.

As soon as he landed Ikadevil grabbed at him again, and he backflipped out of the way a little more quickly, angling himself toward the faint breeze coming down the hallway.

Again and again his old enemy lunged for him, and again and again Ikadevil moved a little more slowly as cracks tore open in his chest and arms and sparks popped angrily from his open wounds. Again and again Kamen Rider moved a little faster as he ducked under one wild swing, jumped over an awkward kick and rolled back out of the way as Ikadevil raised his hands over his head and smashed them down where Kamen Rider had been.

"We end this, Shinigami," Kamen Rider said and went into a stance, the turbine in his belt buckle spinning. His battle-worn body ached as he jumped straight into the flow of a ventilation duct, his turbine spinning so quickly it was nothing but a red blur. As he started coming down he leaned his body back, one leg out in the familiar pose he'd made so many times.

" **RIDER KIIIIIICK!** " Power exploded out of his body again from one single point this time as he connected with Ikadevil's chest. The squid monster just stood there and seemed to be waiting for the end as Kamen Rider came down, then stumbled away with the awesome force of the kick. Small explosions ripped all across his body and the white skin around his head and chest seemed to start to melt.

As he shook and seemed to be about to burst, though, Ikadevil croaked out, "My sons will avenge me." Then in a blinding ball of fire he exploded and flung pieces of his body all over the hall.

Kamen Rider looked down at the remains of his old enemy, defeated again, wondering what he meant with his last words. Then he turned away and looked for a way higher into the fortress. His power wasn't at full yet, but he couldn't let that stop him. There was still a world to save.

* * *

Tarock landed on top of an unconscious sentoin, pieces of her cracked chestplate flaking off from the dent Jak had made with his punch. He came stomping through the door, obviously intent on finishing her off. Tarock raised her scepter and a Quickening Ray shot from the tip, but burst into tiny points of light as it harmlessly burst against Jak's metal fist.

With all her awesome strength she swung the Arm of the Empire at his chest like a mace but it only skidded along his armored body. After a second Tarock gasped in horror to see a crack form across the gem at the scepter's tip and then a chip break off and bounce off her mask. Jak swiped his fist at Tarock's head and she ducked just in time, the force of his arm shooting by was almost enough to knock Tarock down.

But then what? He was more powerful than she was, easily, and this was her strongest form. But as Tarock tried to come up with an attack she hadn't tried, that wouldn't destroy her weapon even more thoroughly, she saw something that made her think for a second her eyes were going bad.

A small wisp of light, shifting crazily between colors as it danced in front of her face, then zipped to the cracked tip of her scepter, to her card case on the side of her belt. The weird little clump of light hovered over the Arm of the Empire as if trying to tell her something. On a crazy whim she held out the Pentacles Card and the Arm of the Empire in front of her, and there was a flash of green light.

Suddenly Tarock's left arm dropped to her side as a sudden weight pulled down on it. Over her forearm was a heavy white gauntlet with a spiked ball covering her hand. Covering the back of her forearm was a five-pointed star engraved in gold, with a wide circular gem of the deepest purple set into it, which throbbed with light every few seconds, and purple energy arced from spike to spike of her new weapon.

"Should I be afraid of that toy of yours?" Jak sneered and took a stomping step closer to her. Suddenly Tarock sprinted at him with the full speed of her Empress Form, easily ducked under Jak's punch at her head, and then turned around and smashed her spiked fist into his back with all the strength of her Pentacles Form surging through it. She whirled and slammed it into the side of Jak's head with all her strength. The horn she hit seemed to bend a bit but then Jak growled in anger and his hand shot out and grabbed her by the wrist and yanked Tarock into a headbutt that cracked one of the lenses of her mask.

She kicked his chest over and over, the villain growling as he tightened his grip on her wrist, the metal starting to creak under the awesome pressure he put on it. Behind her mask Tarock clenched her teeth in pain, then without warning her fist seemed to explode.

The mace on the end launched off with a deafening pop that was almost as loud as the clang it made as it ricocheted off Jak's metal jaw. His grip weakened enough for Tarock to slip her wrist out and drop to the ground. She whirled the mace around her head and let it go, slamming into Jak's chest and knocking him back. He recovered quickly and grabbed the chain, but before he could reel Tarock in she slipped out her Wands Card.

Her Arc Driver scanned over it and the gauntlet popped free of her hand before a long white staff appeared in the air in front of her. On both ends were bronze-colored circles carved with the images of bearded wizards, and a purple gem hovered in the center of each circle.

Tarock whirled the staff and streams of fire trailed in the air behind it. Jak regarded her suspiciously, observing her and her new power before he made his next move. But she didn't give him that chance: she made her move.

Suddenly she lashed out and hit him on the elbow with her flaming staff. Jake yelled in pain as the weapon hit a vulnerable spot on his armored body, but with the speed of her Wands Form flowing through her she darted around behind him before he could attack and slashed her fiery staff across his knees. Jak roared and swung his heavy arm backward at Tarock, who somersaulted over his head and slammed the fire of her staff into his chin.

Jak's head jerked back from her attack, and Tarock ran around him back into the room where Kotaro was imprisoned. She looked for something to smash to set him free, but froze as she spotted something else she hadn't before: a pair of clear rubber tubes attached to his arms, dripping blood into a transparent tube behind Kotaro. What could they possibly want with his blood, Tarock asked herself with fear. And she decided whatever it was, they weren't going to get it.

Tarock swiped at the cuffs around his hands and cut through them in one fiery blow. She dropped her staff and caught Kotaro who gave a long, dry gasp as his eyes jumped open from the sudden shock of being cut free. "It's okay now, boss. We're gonna get you out of here."

"No, you aren't," growled Jak Medora from the doorway. Tarock set Kotaro down and grabbed for her staff from where it fell but already Jak was charging her like a bull. Green sparks blasted from his horns and hit her on the shoulder. Before Tarock even hit the ground Jak's hard metal head slammed into her already crumbling chest armor and sent bits of purple metal flying. The wind was squeezed from her lungs as she slammed into the ground.

Tarock tried to roll over to where she'd dropped her staff but Jak growled and stomped his foot down the ground in front of it, blocking her. Green bolts shot form his horns again and Tarock just barely rolled the way in time before they hit the floor and exploded, leaving a smoking crater. Before he could get off another shot she jumped up and threw a punch at his metal chin, still scorched from before. Energy shot from his horns again, forming a web of energy in front of her as Tarock was launching herself at him. She screamed and pain ripped through her arm as it passed through the web in between them.

The clang echoed out of the room as Tarock's fist went numb, but to her surprise Jak actually stumbled back, wobbled on his feet for a second and recovered. But by then Tarock had scanned another card.

Light flashed from the crystal in her Arc Driver over the Swords Card in her left hand, the only one where she could still move her fingers. Another weapon appeared, a short white rod with a purple jewel stuck in one end, but a lot smaller than the one in her usual scepter. A pair of white crossbars like ivory _unfolded_ from the other end and before her eyes golden etchings of roses formed on them. Then from the hilt extended a long, slim purple blade. It didn't look as if it was made of metal, but instead like the same gem as on the other side of the hilt.

She grabbed the sword and held it in her only good hand. Jak was grinding his metal teeth in rage at her now, like that last punch had finally made it personal. Again his horns glowed and already Tarock was flipping backward to get herself out of the way. She landed on one hand and her shoulders and rolled awkwardly with it, her numb hand tucked in against her chest and her right shoulder still burning after Jak had headbutted her there.

The air seemed to crackle for a second before another lightning barrage came from Jak's horns. Tarock held out the sword, ready to try and block one good shot if she could but fully expected to catch the worst of it on what was left of her armor.

But as she swung at the oncoming bolts the closest one hit the blade and bounced off, punching through the roof. She caught the other bolt on the tip of her sword, then spun herself around in a wide circle, the power collected into a ball on the tip, and then released it with a final swing.

It flew through the air and right into Jak's chest. He was knocked off his feet and back through the door into the hall. When he hit the floor a second later it groaned for a second and the caved in under the weight of his back. He growled and climbed back to his feet, stomping hard enough he dented the floor.

" **Dire Fate! Blade of the Condemned!** " Tarock's Arc Driver shouted as she stood in the doorway holding her sword, the blade flashing with purple power and giving off tiny energy motes that looked almost like rose petals that drifted away on the air. She raised it high with her good arm, then brought it down in a massive slash. A wave of purple energy jumped from the sword and across the hall, trailing glowing rose petals and cutting through Jak's body on a diagonal.

Sparks poured from the wound running across Jak's entire body, but still he stood up and tried to stagger over to continue his attack. Tarock raised her sword to attack again, but stopped as she saw someone else suddenly appear.

" **Rider…CHOP!** " Kamen Rider said as he brought down his arm on top of the cut through Jak's body, then cleaved through him in less than a second, totally separating the halves of the villain's body. Jak let out a last piercing scream before his pieces exploded into clouds of flame around the first Kamen Rider.

Tarock caught her breath a second later. "I would've taken care of him in a second."

"I know," Kamen Rider replied. "Did you find him?"

"Yeah, he's back in here," Tarock answered, pointing a thumb over her shoulder. She glanced back and saw Kotaro sitting back inside the room, and he managed to sit up and look her in the eye then. But past his shoulder she saw something else. The vial of his blood was glowing, then turned into a ball of light and smashed through the window in the back, where the eclipse of the sun was almost complete.

Tarock ran to the window and watched the streak of light that was Kotaro's blood suddenly turn and fly toward the inner reaches of the fortress. But something else had caught her eye. Something was flying up toward the window: a man in an almost blindingly blue uniform, wearing a helmet shaped like a missile and holding some kind of weapon in one hand that looked like a booster rocket and left a flaming trail as it dragged him through the air. He spotted Tarock and turned toward the window, then stopped and hovered outside.

"Lisa? Is that you?" he asked.

"Gentaro?" she asked as she placed the voice.

"It **is** you! Is that your powered-up form? It looks so cool! Purple's such an awesome color!" he gushed.

"Can we forget about that for a second?" Tarock interrupted. "Something really important just flew away through that window! Did you see where it went?"

"Of course," he replied. "It's going straight up to that big tall rock. The one with the eye on top."

Tarock sighed and nodded. She had a feeling if it got there, there was going to be hell to pay. She reached into the card cased on her belt with her good hand and got out one with a roaring lion's face on it.

"I've got a couple other Riders coming up right behind me," Fourze said.

"Good," Tarock replied. "I've got a feeling we'll need all the help we can get."

* * *

 **Happy New Year everybody!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Kamen Rider Tarock Re-Dealt: All Rider War – The Devil's Nail**

 **Part 6, Final**

Slowly, gasping for breath for a second, Kotaro Minami hauled himself to his feet and leaned back against the wall. "Are you okay?" Tarock asked him, and he nodded.

"This is nothing compared to when Nobu…when Shadow Moon beat me," he replied. "I'm a Century King, we're meant to be the strongest. Just give me a minute to catch my breath, and I'll ride with you."

"I'll take Hongou-san," Fourze added. "Can you fly like that, Lisa?"

"Didn't look like it from what I saw," Kamen Rider said teasingly. Tarock gave him a mild glare but then held up three cards, the first with a golden-maned lion's face roaring on the front.

"No, but I've got this." She threw them into the air where they formed into a row and Tarock fired a beam from her Arm of the Empire through them. The cards started to glow with her power and expand.

" **Awaken! Royal Leo!** " shouted her Arc Driver.

" **Hen…SHIN!** " Kotaro called.

* * *

The wall of Kotaro's prison exploded outward, a giant lion, skin white like marble and its mane a solid ring of gold around its head, smashed through. On his back were Tarock, bits of her once-regal armor crumbling off. Behind her was Kotaro, once again transformed into Kamen Rider Black and by contrast looking awesome in his sleek dark armor. Fourze flew after them, carried into the sky with an orange booster rocket around his right arm and holding onto Kamen Rider's wrist with his left.

Royal Leo landed on the roof of a low building and then turned and jumped the two hundred feet to another one closer to the giant black obelisk in the middle of the flying island, the glowing eye above it seeming to glow even brighter as the eclipse overhead inched even closer to completing itself. As the lion seemed to glide through the air on his super-powered jump, Tarock's blood froze as the huge eye turned slightly and seemed to look right at her. But right then a group of flying shapes came into sight and flying into formation behind Fourze.

The first one she saw had on a bright red overcoat on top of his suit and a silver mask with a red lens covering the entire front side. Wide black wings extended from his back and giant clawed gauntlets covered his hands, but most strangely was a silvery dragon's head sticking out of the front of his chest. Flying right behind him was another Rider in a green undersuit and mask with brown armor that reminded her a lot of Kamen Rider and Black's armor, but the white belt with a green rhomboid-shaped crystal in the center looked out of place among the rest of his armor. And last in the little squadron behind them was someone in a dark blue suit with weird neon green lions all over his torso and legs. Over his chest was a vest of heavy white and orange armor, like the sleek wings sticking out of the back. Hanging off the back of it were a pair of miniguns.

As Royal Leo came down from his jump on the edge of the next roof it immediately groaned and started to crumble, but already the giant lion crouched and jumped into the air again, aimed straight at the black obelisk in the middle of the island.

Off to Tarock's left one building opened up like some kind of plant, looking like a giant cabbage with flailing tentacles and a huge mouth with four rows of teeth on each side coming out of the top. One tentacle came swinging at Royal Leo in midair and the lion roared and brought back one of his huge paws to shred it, but Tarock blasted it aside with a beam from her scepter. The Rider with the neon green tiger stripes on his suit turned, pulled up the miniguns hanging off his sides and started blazing away at the plant monster. He cruised around it in circles as the others kept flying on.

The giant obelisk loomed right in front of them. Royal Leo lowered his hind legs and hit the obelisk, digging in with his claws, then started scaling the side of the structure at surprising speed, digging his claws into the stone. As he climbed higher and higher, the eye floating over them turned and looked down at them.

"Look out!" Kamen Rider called in warning as the stone _rippled_ suddenly nearby Royal Leo and a domed head formed from it. It opened its giant fanged mouth it tongue, tipped with a hissing snake, shot out at them.

" **Rider PUNCH!** " Black yelled and threw a punch that knocked the snake away for a second and rained bits of broken rock. But two more heads appeared and flung more giant snakes from their mouths.

The Rider in green and brown turned. " **Let's Ride: Super-1!** " The crystal in his belt flashed and he transformed into another Rider, one with a black undersuit, gleaming silver mask, armor, boots and gloves, which to Tarock's utter disbelief had fringe coming off them. He went into freefall, and called out, " **Power Hands!** " and his gloves turned red. He punched the nearest stone snake, shattering it, then turned in his fall and called again, " **Elec Hands!** " His gloves turned blue, and he managed to fire off an electric blast from his fingertips that shattered the other two stone snakes. Power crackled over them for a second before they fell to pieces bit by bit and the head sticking out of the obelisk fell apart too.

Tarock watched him fall out of sight, thinking that for just a second she thought she saw him flash into another form and fly off in a different direction, but Black shook her by the shoulder. "We have to keep going, it'll only be a moment before we're attacked again!" Tarock nodded and Royal Leo started to climb again, jumping from where he hug, sunk his claws into the obelisk when he got to the top of his jump, then jumped again as high as he could, and sank his claws into the obelisk again.

But the giant glowing stared down at them even more intensely now. Suddenly a massive beam ripped from its pupil down to where Fourze and Royal Leo were making their way up. The last Rider flew up in front of them and blocked the beam on the giant clawed gauntlets over his arms. "Go! I'll keep this off you!" he called to them.

"Haruto-san…!" Fourze starred to argue, but then just nodded and flew away to the top. "Thank you. You're a true Kamen Rider." Leo jumped to the side and climbed up past the other Rider as well, and Tarock couldn't avoid giving him a questioning look as he struggled to block the beam, suddenly throwing his arms wide and spewing a huge jet of flame from the mouth of the dragon ornament on his chest. As the beam started to move away, tracking and Leo, the dragon Rider put something on his finger and touched his hand to his belt buckle.

" **Attract. Please!** " The beam moved back to where he hovered as if dragged by some unseen force. As Leo kept climbing and Tarock lost sight, she could just barely heard his belt say, " **Infinity** …"

The giant eye's beam lanced down, sizzling Tarock and Black's armor from the heat. Then for a second her vision turned entirely white, and then the giant beam was gone. The giant eye had turned a pale orange and was flickering badly in and out of view as if it had been weakened by the other Rider's attack. Leo scrambled up the rest of the way to the top of the stone tower as quick as his awesome strength would let him, to whatever was awaiting them at the top.

* * *

Royal Leo hauled himself onto a wide circular platform at the top of the obelisk and Fourze landed next to them, finally getting to set Kamen Rider down next to him.

"Here we are…sir," Fourze said hesitantly.

Kamen Rider looked over at him, and Tarock had the feeling he had a strange look underneath his bug-eyed mask. "There might be a war, but there's no ranks here."

"Indeed, why lengthen the names when the list of casualties is going to be so long already?" asked a snide man's voice near the middle of the wide platform. He wore a long white cape, but his face was the vision of cruel perfection that was Nikolai Maltus. Underneath he had on a black suit and tie, and in front of him was a low golden pedestal was the familiar hilt of the Satan Sabre. Laid out on the pedestal were jagged pieces of metal arranged in the shape of a blade. And over them, he was holding the clear glass tube of Kamen Rider Black's blood.

Overhead the strange eclipse completed itself, the sun just a halo of flames around the dark disc hovering in the sky. Maltus smiled. "I think you know what comes next. Especially you, Black Sun."

"I don't answer to that name anymore," Kamen Rider Black replied, raising his arm and defiantly clenching his fist next to his face.

Maltus's smile only turned even more mocking. "I don't need you to answer to it. I've already got everything I need from you." He turned the cylinder over and poured a thin layer of blood over the pieces of the Satan Saber.

"You aren't a Century King, I am," Black warned him. "Even if you do repair that evil thing, my control over it surpasses yours."

"Oh, I don't think so," Maltus replied. He opened the front of his suit jacket revealing his belt, which had a rectangular silver buckle with a round green gem in the middle. "Recognize this, Black Sun? A good friend of yours wore it once, the other King Stone. But he wasn't your friend anymore by the time you finally saw him again, was he? Poor, poor Nobuhiko…but history will probably remember him better as Shadow Moon. That is, if I let the people who survive today remember anything that happened before it."

Then Maltus took the cylinder and stabbed it against his arm, his grin turning pinched but within seconds the rest of the blood had drained away.

Royal Leo gave a low warning growl and started slinking closer. Black jumped down from the giant lion's back, Kamen Rider and Fourze cautiously closing in on Nikolai Maltus. But Maltus just threw his arms wide and the glow from the gem in his belt started to spread over his body. "The blood of a Century King now flows through my veins, and under the darkness of an eclipse, I will be reborn…and become one myself! Then you'll see the true power of this blade."

He grabbed the hilt of the Satan Sabre, and the Kamen Riders charged him, Leo roaring and running behind them. But there was a burst of light and suddenly the Satan Sabre was complete, its long red blade seeming to drink in the darkness of the eclipse. Waves of power came off him that distorted the air and made Tarock's crystal eye tingle uncomfortably. Before they could get close enough to strike Maltus dragged its tip against the ground in front of him in an arc and a wall of crimson energy jumped up between him and the attacking Riders. Black's fist was the closest, and he yelled in pain as the fiery energy touched him and yanked his arm back, smoking.

"Let me show you _my_ armor, my friends," Maltus said, locking eyes with Tarock behind her mask. "A method to call it inspired by our foreign friend here, I suppose," he said, then snapped his fingers and a card was in his hand. A red winged figure, obviously Satan, stood in the middle while a man and woman cowered at his feet. At the top were the numerals XV, and below that, to no-one's surprise, was written THE DEVIL.

Maltus swiped it in front of his belt. " **Diabolus! Diabolus! DIABOLUS!** " it _screamed_.

Smoke gushed out of the King Stone and surrounded his body. The power flowing off Maltus seemed to increase ten times. Tarock's fake eye shook so hard she couldn't hold in a scream of pain, and within seconds was rattling so hard she was sure it was about to tear itself right out of her head. Then a concussive wave ripped across the platform as the energy in Maltus's shield exploded outward. It knocked Tarock off Leo's back and sent her rolling all the way to the edge of the platform. When she could see clearly again the first thing she saw was bits of what was left of her chest armor falling off the edge to the ground. She rolled away, not wanting to think about how far up they were, a fall she was sure even a Kamen Rider couldn't survive.

But then she saw the smoke clearing around Maltus's body, and for the first time since she felt like remembering, she had to admit to herself she was afraid.

For a second he looked more like a statue than a person, his black armor seeming to be made out of rock rather than metal like theirs. Bands of gold lined the wrists and elbows of his gauntlets, looped over his feet on the front and tops of boots. Engraved into the gold bands were the shapes of malformed demons chasing terrified humans. Every finger ended in a curved claw made of some kind of dull red rock, and a crescent-shaped blade of that same red stone. On the back of his left gauntlet was an X that seemed to be made of dancing flame right on top of the armor, and an identical V was on the back of his right gauntlet.

On his black chestplate was an inverted star that was made of that same weird fire, but framed in a circle of gold engraved into the armor itself. On his pauldrons were each a row of three inwardly curved spikes, made of what looked like lava that was somehow held into their shapes. A short one on the outside, longer in the middle and then largest next on the inside. Jets of flame and smoke flew off them every few seconds.

Finally his mask was almost entirely blank, small grey lenses set into it and with a pair of arcing horns attached to the sides. They seemed to be made of flowing lava that somehow kept their shape, made of a burning red and fading into a harsh yellow at the top.

"Kamen Rider Belial, at your service," he said. "Now, I believe this is where you try to stop my diabolical master plan. I'll even give you the first hit for free, I promise."

Royal Leo growled menacingly. "Minami," Kamen Rider said simply, then charged. Black sprang as high into the air as his awesome strength would take him and then started to come down in his signature jump kick.

" **Rider KIIIIICK!** "

" **Rider PUUNNCH!** "

Black's kick hit Belial in the chest just inches above where Kamen Rider's fist connected with Belial's stomach. An invisible shockwave from their combined blows ripped across the platform and almost knocked Tarock out of the saddle again.

Then Belial slashed the Satan Sabre in an arc and swatted both heroes aside like the insects their armor resembled.

"Let's go, Lisa! We'll show them what a pair of younger friends can do!" Fourze called to her, in a laughing tone that made her sure he was grinning behind his mask.

"Are you always on that 'friendship' kick?"

"Always!" He fired a burst of energy from the jump jet on his back and flew across the platform. Leo charged right behind him. As they closed in Fourze suddenly whisked out a sword shaped like the front of a space rocket. He stabbed the end of it at Belial's side, and as Tarock had expected the dark Rider easily deflected it on the blade of his Satan Sabre.

And then Leo charged at full speed from the other side and lashed out with both giant claws in the second where he was distracted. Belial was knocked off-balance for a second but didn't go down even under Royal Leo's furious onslaught, and even turned suddenly and parried another of Fourze's attacks then knocked him off the ground with a powerful slash.

But it was nothing compared to the power of his next attack. " **Depth Claw**." Waves of fire traveled down Belial's body, from his horns, through the spikes across his arms, down into the Satan Sabre whose blade erupted with giant billowing flames before he struck. Then as it stabbed into Leo's body a giant clawed hand formed from flame engulfed the blade and raked its talons across Royal Leo. The giant lion let out a feral shriek of pain, but Tarock held onto him, and her will to fight surged through him and he managed to lift his paw and smack Belial back a few steps.

"Impressive," he panted for a second. "Looks like I'll need to use my next step after all. You ought to find this one flattering, _Lisa_." He stabbed the Satan Sabre toward the sky, toward the moon hovering in front of the sun. A tendril of pure _darkness_ flowed down from the moon's shadow and engulfed the blade. " **Infernal Assault**." He pointed the blade at Tarock and then the darkness it'd absorbed spread out from it like a tidal wave. Hideous shapes formed inside it, horned demons and fanged vampires, finned gillmen and banshees with burning eyes and gaping mouths that seemed to go down forever. A hundred evil faces looked at Tarock from inside that wall of darkness, then in a second there were a hundred more.

For a second Tarock's blood froze, but she clenched her teeth and Royal Leo lunged into the cloud of countless screaming, clawing abominations. He battered at the dark energy with his enormous claws, splattering ten horrible faces with every swing. But the darkness spread like an enormous V around them. Inhuman hands dragged their fingers across Royal Leo's body, then surged higher and raked at Tarock's crumbling armor too.

Leo roared in pain, louder than ever. Tarock screamed too as the purple plating was ripped off her armor and a crowd of demons grabbed her and threw her into the air. The entire way down they slashed and pulled at her body with their knife-like fingers. It was too much even for her to hold in, and she screamed over and over, her lungs burning from the force of her screaming before she finally crashed into the platform. and for a minute lost all feeling in her body.

She tried to look up as she saw a figure both bright and dark above her: Kamen Rider Belial. He stabbed the Satan Sabre at her hurt, its power spent from that last attack but no less deadly.

" **Giant Foot On**." Suddenly Belial was stopped in his tracks, and a giant footprint formed in the ground around him. Fourze stood behind him, a giant red boot around one foot that he was grinding furiously against the ground. Black and Kamen Rider grabbed Belial by the arms and tried to pull him away but he strained against them, even as Black's stripes and eyes glowed with power.

But wispy strands of darkness started to slither down from the moon's shadow again. Tarock rolled backward to get out of Belial's way and as the darkness flowed into his body he growled like a demon. He spun, swinging the Satan Sabre around him and scattering the three heroes trying to hold him back with an arc of power that exploded from the Satan Sabre with a sound like thunder and flew to the edges of the platform before disappearing.

"Kisaragi," Kamen Rider hissed. "The eclipse is feeding his power. You've got to get up there and stop it."

"You want me to do something about _the moon_?" Fourze asked in disbelief.

"You're a Kamen Rider, there's no limit to what you can do. Don't ever forget that."

Fourze looked at him again, and Tarock could only imagine the disbelieving look he had to have on under his mask. But after a second he solemnly took out a small device, flicked a switch on it and slapped it into a slot on his belt.

" **ROCKET STATES ON!** " His armor turned orange and a big orange rocket appeared over both of his arms at once. They roared to life and he flew over Belial's head, disappearing into a portal that opened in the air, then was gone again.

Belial turned to face them and after a second Tarock could hear him chuckling. Power flowed from the darkened moon above them down toward the blade of his sword again, and Black jumped to the front of their group, the gem in his belt glowing along with his eyes and the colored stripes on his armor as he called up every bit of his power trying to seize control of the Satan Sabre away from Belial.

A weak feline growl distracted Liss then. She glanced over at Royal Leo, his body scuffed and bleeding out puffs of purple energy from long cuts made by Belial's last attack. He dragged himself closer to Tarock, touching her shoulders with one giant paw. The light in his eyes flickered for a second, but Tarock reached out to the giant animal and touched his face lightly.

Their power had plateaued, and even with other Riders reinforcing them Belial was just too much to stop. What could she do now? If only she had a more powerful weapon she could still use…she didn't even have any of her Wild Cards left. Royal Leo looked at her almost apologetically, for failing her even with all of his savage strength. What would Sensei, or Lost, or Ben think of her like this? Hell, Rexia had come back _from the dead_ to see what she was really like. Kamen Rider Tarock's story couldn't as pathetically as this, could it…?

Suddenly that weird wisp of light appeared that had gotten her to merge her old weapons with her Empress Form a little while before. It spread itself on Tarock's hand where she was touching Leo's face…

" **Fuse. Royal Leo!** "

"What…?"

Suddenly Royal Leo started to disassemble, legs floating apart from his body and head detaching. They closed around the weary Tarock, giving off a soothing glow…

Black had closed in with Belial and threw his strongest punches trying to weaken the evil Rider's grip on his cursed sword. The glow of Black's King Stone burned even brighter as he slowly drank in the power of the eclipse overhead himself, but Belial hadn't been systematically tortured and had his blood drained over the last few hours. As Black aimed a chop at his wrist, Belial grabbed him suddenly by the arm and slashed Black across the chest. Black shouted in agony and was knocked off the ground by the awesome power of Belial's attack, but Belial held onto his arm and he was jerked back to fall onto the point of the Satan Sabre.

Then Kamen Rider came somersaulting through the air suddenly behind Belial, unfolding himself into a jump kick. Sparks flew from his turbine as he summoned up every bit of power his body still contained. " **Lightning…Rider…Kick!** " His boot smoked as he slammed it into Belial's shoulders. To his relief a powerful explosion ripped from the contact and knocked Belial forward. Black grabbed his opponent and hooked his arms underneath Belial's and locked his hands together behind the evil Rider's head.

" **Power Stripes!** " The red striping along his armor flared with energy and started to burn as Black held them against the villain's armor. Kamen Rider threw a high kick that connected with the side of Belial's head, which jerked to one side but his fiery horn scorched Kamen Rider's foot and he jumped back with a shout of pained surprise.

With that the Satan Sabre rose for another swing and with great reluctance Black had to jump back, curl into a somersault with practiced skill and come out onto his feet. He circled to his right, studying Belial for an opening. Black wasn't afraid to die, no proper Kamen Rider was if it was a sacrifice for a greater good, but they'd only just started to slow their awesome opponent down. And this time Black had a feeling there was no legendary medicine of the whale mutant tribe to save him this time.

Then he ran at the villain, who took a swing at Black, a wave of fire full of screaming demons for a second trailing through the air behind the blade. But Black jumped and went prone in midair, the blast of hellish energy passing underneath him and barely leaving a mark on his armor. Belial was obviously powerful, more powerful than even Shadow Moon had been. But he hadn't fought and won dozens and dozens of battles against other powerful opponents.

Black had.

He _pressed_ his foot off of the force in the air of Belial's attack and flipped over so that his foot came down right in the evil Rider's face. He followed through on his momentum as Belial staggered and roared in surprise and pain, and before the villain could recover he called out, " **King Stone Flash!** "

A wall of red light pulsed from Black's belt buckle and blasted against Belial. Power ripped across his body, sending up fountains of sparks the smoking spikes on his shoulders and mask. The Satan Sabre shook in his hand, his control over it shaken for a second by the energy of the red King Stone surging through it. Suddenly an arm hooked under his.

" **Rider…THROW!** " Kamen Rider shouted as he hurled Belial over his shoulder with the great strength he could still manage. As the evil Rider tumbled through the air, Kamen Rider grabbed at his demonic sword. But Belial tightened his grip and held it against him as he hit the ground and rolled to a stop, then seemed to **flow** back to his feet instead of jump back up. His armor was cracked and smoking across the chest and wrists from the attacks he'd just taken, but the Satan Sabre was already starting to turn dark as he tried to draw in power from the eclipse again.

" **Successor Leo**!" the voice of her Arc Driver said, _echoing_ across the platform. Then a giant shape twice as tall as any of them dashed through them and swung a claw half as big as he was at Belial and knocked him with a crash.

It was Tarock, but wearing a suit of scuffed white armor that stood on thick feline legs ending in digitrade feet wide enough to , and swung wide arms ending in bronze-colored claws each three and a half feet long. Only her head peeked out of the top, above the face of a roaring white lion with a bronze mane mounted on the chest. Ridged armor of that same dull bronze color covered it shoulders and hips.

Then she lashed out and deepened the claw marks across Belial's chest.

* * *

The other Kamen Riders followed V3 as the green-clad veteran charged down the hall into the depths of the flying fortress, jumping over the broken body of a red-scaled crayfish monster he'd seemed to recognize. He seemed to be the only one among their war party who knew where he was going, maybe from all the times he'd helped fight all the incarnations of END-Shocker that had come before this one. Maybe his powers, given to him by the Double Riders themselves, were more finely-tuned toward such an old evil.

None of them knew exactly. But it didn't matter, as long as they found the core where they could cripple the flying fortress.

"YEEEE!" Two masked sentoin jumped out, but Joe Shimamura broke away from the group, tattered yellow muffler flying out behind him as he plowed into them like a missile and knocked them back into the darkness they'd come from. He clutched his elbow and winced in pain but hid it quickly. Maybe he was a cyborg, but even they weren't immortal.

Soon the end of the walkway came into view, and the Riders who had them readied their weapons as they saw the heavy metal door marking the end, and that someone was there waiting for them.

"Stand aside!" V3 called to them, a pair of dark-haired women in green and purple unitards. They were leaning over a keypad next to the door, and looked up, raising their hands over their heads.

"We're not with END-Shocker," said the woman in purple.

"No, they're not," Joe said as he pushed his way to the front of the group of armored warriors. "Rui, Hitomi…what in god's name are you doing up here?"

"Trying to open this door, of course," Hitomi, the girl in green, replied, a knowing glint in her eye as if proud of her of dodging his real question. Then again, he'd never opened up to anyone about what his and Francoise's _real_ jobs had once been. "If you heroes are ready to finish up, since you handle this kind of thing better than we do…?" she went on, hit the enter button on the keypad and the heavy security door slid open.

Inside was a transparent glass column humming with a coil of green power inside. Curved tubes emerged from the circular metal base it rested on into the floor, streams of the green energy flowing through them and out of sight.

"What do you say, Joe?" V3 asked, his tired voice still having a smirking edge to it.

"I can do more damage in a second than you can in an hour, Shiro."

V3 didn't respond to Joe's jibe. He crossed his arms over his chest and the turbines in his Double Typhon Belt started to spin at twice their speed. Sparks danced on the ends of his antennae and a wind suddenly picked up in the empty room and blew his scarf around.

" **V3…THUNDER!** " A bolt of lightning jumped from his antennae and arced toward the glowing engine. In less than a second the room shook with a sonic boom as Joe dashed forward trying to outrun it.

* * *

Kamen Rider Belial jumped forty feet to his side but was still shaken by the force as Liss's huge new mech-armor smashed into the ground from a tremendous jump of her own. She slammed her shoulder into him and knocked him into the air with a horrific crash and sparks erupting from Belial's body as he sailed backward.

But Tarock didn't let up, dropping to all fours and chasing after him, swatting him out of the air with a ferocious swipe of her giant claw. He rolled along the ground, closer to the center of the platform, and again Tarock jumped after him, seeming to block out the eclipse with her massive suit of feline armor. This time her claw came down right on top of his chest and the evil Rider spasmed and screamed horribly, stabbing at Leo's arm with the Satan Sabre. Bits of white armor chipped away but Leo just raised his claw and slammed it down on top of Belial again, smashing a hole in the ground around his shoulders.

At the edge of the platform Black and Kamen Rider staggered for a second from the awesome force of Tarock's blow.

" **Brave Slash!** " shouted the voice of Tarock's Arc Driver, bolts of red power ripping from the jewel in its core and up the mech-armor's wide, powerful arm. His giant claws glowed with red sparks before he lashed out at Belial with all his might.

The dark-armored Rider raised his Satan Sabre and, impossibly, braced himself and _blocked it_. Tarock kept pushing and inch by inch Belial slid back. Tiny cracks started forming on the wrist of Tarock's mech-armor and sparks jumped off the claws and showered over Belial's back. Then Tarock let out an angry yell and smashed her armor's claws into Belial and knocked him back, a smoking hole torn in his chestplate and small chips shattering off the blade of the Satan Sabre!

Before he had the chance to recover and counterattack suddenly dark figures came somersaulting through the air. It was Black and Kamen Rider, and they each went into a flying kick aimed at the smoking hole in Belial's armor. Both veteran heroes started glowing as they came down, " **Double…Legend…Kick!** " they both yelled. Like a pair of fiery spears they crashed into Belial feet-first. He flew back again, plumes of sparks erupting from his body after the powerful attacks he'd just suffered from the assault of the Kamen Riders.

The eclipse above him seemed to darken suddenly, and then Kamen Rider Belial's screams of pain stopped. Instead he let out a soft, mocking laugh. Cracks formed from the hole in his armor where the Riders had attacked him, and inside of seconds had spread all over his body. The molten lava in his mask's horns and shoulder spikes melted and dripped down over his body, as pieces of his black and gold armor shook themselves off him.

"What's happening to him?" Tarock asked, voice dry and tired from everything she'd been through in the last few hours, and not looking forward to yet another battle.

"He's evolving into another form," Black replied gravely.

"Correct," Belial said, his voice an animal-like growl now. "No longer do I need to be a mere Kamen Rider. The blood has finished flowing through my body, my growth as the new Century King is complete!"

The green King Stone in his belt explodedwith light like fire and as it surrounded him he started to close in on the exhausted Kamen Riders. He waved a black, clawed hand through the green flames around him and a wave of awesome power blasted across the platform and easily sent them scattering through air. He clenched his fist in Tarock's direction and a bolt of fire shot out and engulfed her. Cracks formed all over her mech-armor and a second later it shattered completely and faded away into tiny bits of light.

It wasn't Kamen Rider Tarock who hit the platform, but a battered and bruised Liss Decker. Dimly she could see Black and Kamen Rider clawing at the ground to haul themselves to their feet, but the ball of green fire that was Belial was practically on top of her. They'd never get close enough to save her in time. Had it all come down to this…?

All of a sudden a horrifying _shudder_ ran through the whole fortress and the giant platform they were on tilted to one side. Liss yelled in fear and grabbed for the edge as she rolled with the shift. She managed to stop herself and lay on the edge, and below she could see an army of Kamen Riders punching, kicking and shooting their way through a swarm of sentoin troopers and animal-like monsters she could only barely make out from that height.

The ball of fire around Belial had almost solidified, and through it she could see he was already almost restored from all the damage they'd done to him. "You managed to annoy me, little Rider," he said, his voice even deeper and more inhuman. "Enjoy your oblivion," he said, and a ball of energy started to form at the tip of his finger.

The platform jerked again, throwing his aim off for just a second. And in that second, Liss Decker jumped off the side of the platform.

* * *

It had seemed like insanity. Suicide. A last act of desperation and fear. Maybe, an acknowledgement that she'd never deserved to call herself a Kamen Rider in the first place.

But just before Belial had been about to destroy her, she'd noticed that weird little wisp of rainbow-colored light just below her, flying back and forth frantically. She'd gotten the strangest feeling it was asking her to trust it, and after the times she'd realized she'd seen it before, and the help it had given her—powering up the attack of her Cups Form enough to bring down that giant Sabbat, showing her how to combine her original weapons with her Empress Form for greater power and converting Royal Leo into humanoid mech-armor—there was nothing she could do but trust it.

As the raging battle between Riders and monsters came closer and closer at her with every second, she hoped it was going to reveal what it had in mind quickly.

There was another terrible _shudder_ over the sound of rushing wind and the fortress bucked to the other side and spun out of Liss's way, leaving only an empty street waiting for her below.

That couldn't be it, could it? After all the battles she'd won that day alone, it didn't seem right…and that was what Kamen Riders were supposed to protect, justice and peace and all that kind of stuff.

But, Liss reminded herself as the cracked asphalt roared up to greet her, life wasn't fair. It was only what you had the courage to make it. Like when her sister had after she'd come out to the rest of their family, and walked out when their parents rejected her. Like when Liss herself had she'd decided to keep being a Kamen Rider. Like when she'd…when she'd promised she'd find some way to save Lost…

Right underneath her the ground suddenly split open into a long hole. The wisp of light flew straight down it, and as she fell into the darkness Liss had a feeling it was meant just for her.

* * *

END-Shocker's fortress kept losing altitude with the loss of power from its weird engines thanks to the Kamen Riders who'd made their way into the floating castle. Finally it clipped what was left of a building and went into a crazy spin before digging in hard on the ground. Huge chunks of its fortress walls were sent spraying into air from its harsh, sudden stop along with a few unlucky sentoin and monsters.

But the black obelisk in the middle had stayed standing, and Black and Kamen Rider were managing to get to their feet themselves to face down Belial, whose armor was totally repaired. The lava flowing to his horns looked even hotter now, seeming to glow angrily at them.

"This ends now," Kamen Rider declared.

"Yes, it does," Belial said. "But even if we are both Century Kings now, my connection is to an older darkness still, and I have no need for a fight to the finish to claim the full power of this eclipse!"

The King Stone on his belt flashed again, and he doubled in height. Another flash, even brighter than the first, and he'd doubled in height again, the platform creaking and swaying underneath his new size.

"Black! Regroup!" Kamen Rider yelled, and he and Black turned and jumped off the edge of the platform just before it finally collapsed.

Over the ruins of his fortress, and looming over the surrounding rooftops of the city, soon stood Kamen Rider Belial, now a giant hundreds of feet tall. In one gauntleted hand he held up the gleaming Satan Sabre, and swung it with all his terrible strength at the Riders fighting his forces on the ground. A trail of flames coming up to the giant's knee followed behind it, scattering Kamen Riders and his monstrous followers unlucky to be close to it alike…

* * *

Liss fell through endless darkness for what felt like ages, and couldn't even see the wisp of light that had guided her down there anymore. But after a while she realized she was falling slower, and finally could see a room at the bottom of the hole.

She came to a stumbling stop in a small cave. Standing at the other end were two people in hooded robes, an old bearded man and a young woman with strands of dark hair peeking out of the edges of her hood. Weird little beaded strings hung down as ornaments from the edges of the hoods. Liss could make out the wisp of light now, flitting back and forth between the two people.

"What's going on?" Liss asked. Curiously she closed her normal eye and looked at them through her crystal one. She could see pulses of energy traveling up into their bodies through the ground, and opened her regular eye again to see masses of tree roots sticking out of their robes instead of feet.

The woman smiled at her. "We've been asked to help you gain a gift of great power by this one here," she said, indicating the wisp of light with a faint shake of her arm.

"Not one of our kind, but close enough that we can still understand what he asks," the man replied.

"Your kind?" Liss asked.

"People of the earth," the woman said. "We live below it, waiting and observing. We empowered a champion once when it was threatened by a great evil that devoured all life on every world it could reach."

Liss shook her head. "I have powers, and they weren't enough to stop the guy up there. Can you guys give me something better?"

"Not by ourselves," the man answered her. "The J Power has already been invested in another. But this one has a great deal of respect for your character, and is willing to give his own power for you to fight again."

The wisp of light flew from between the two people of the earth and up to Liss's face, right in front of her fake eye. Then it came flooding back…

She remembered a wall of brightly-colored crystals in an underground room. Crystals that were somehow alive…she remembered it showing her about how it was chased across the galaxy by a hideous dark mass, a cosmic disease that couldn't think of anything else except wanting to feed on its great energies.

She saw an image of being brought before this crystal being when she'd been with the evil life essence of the dark creature that had hunted it so long before. How the crystal being had healed her. How she had been followed by a gigantic Chthonian monster, and when her powers as Tarock hadn't been enough to stop it the crystal being had sacrificed himself with a last burst of power to save her.

That been the last she thought she'd ever hear of it. But this small cluster of light…it was part of the life of that wall of crystal she'd met once, so many battles ago.

"What…what's going to happen?" Liss asked, suddenly afraid. Afraid for this strange creature, and what giving her power would do to it.

"We will do what this being asks of us," the woman replied. "We will compress his essence into a form suitable for use with your belt. It will give you power beyond anything you've ever considered. But he will die."

"…again?"

"Yes," the man replied solemnly.

The wisp of light floated in front of Liss for another second, then suddenly zipped between the people of the earth. They lifted their arms and a web of red lines laced themselves together through the air around the light.

"Wait…don't!" Liss yelled.

"It is his decision, Liss Decker," the man replied. The web tightened until the wisp could no longer be seen. "Would you deny him his right to die for a worthy cause? And if he does not, think how many might, with no power to fight back against an evil like the one above us…"

The web shook and groaned between their fingers. Shafts of light lanced out through the tiny openings in the web. The lights in the room flickered, and Liss's fake eye shook in its socket. She shut her eyes to just ride it out, a tear trickling down her right cheek. The one where her eye was still real.

The room stopped shaking. A second later the man said, "It's done, Liss Decker." She opened her eyes again, her real one more slowly. The web between the earth people's hands retreating back into their fingers. Floating in the air between them was a small card, showing a small planet covered in forest divided by oceans. A world untouched by civilization.

Along the top was the number XXI, and across the bottom was written "THE WORLD."

Liss didn't understand it. She hadn't felt much when the Empress had died in front of her, before handing over her powers to Liss. The only times Liss had really interacted with the Empress was when Liss had been on the receiving end of a hate speech or a death ray.

But that wisp of light…whatever it had really been, had healed her when she was about to turn completely into a monster. In the last day he had saved her several times again. And he had brought her down here fully intending to sacrifice his life to give her another weapon.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't _right._ He'd been chased and hounded for who even knew how long. Liss had thought he'd given his life for her once, and now he'd just done it again. Didn't he deserve the right to live, however it was something like him lived? He shouldn't have had to sacrifice himself like that.

No-one should've.

She gripped the card in one gloved hand.

Then she locked her Arc Driver around her waist.

" **The World! SUPREME!** "

* * *

A row of skyscrapers went up in flames from a swing of Kamen Rider Belial's giant cursed sword. For a second a blanket of cinders hit Kamen Rider, covering his giant compound eyes and starting a dozen small fires all over his suit. He wouldn't have felt them even if this hadn't been the most exhausting day he could remember.

END-Shocker's monster army surged forward with monstrous cackles of delight at the sight of how powerful their leader had become. The Kamen Riders braced themselves to fight off another wave.

A cricket monster with a perforated face and spindly legs reaching from the back of its head lunged at Kamen Rider himself, who dodged its first attack then suddenly launched a " **Rider Punch!** " at its head. The attack smashed its body in two, vanishing in puffs of fire. For a second the monsters closest by stopped in their attack, startled by how easily the old Rider had defeated his enemy.

If only he could find some way to use that hesitation to rally the other Riders, and maybe launch a combined attack on Belial. That had worked before, when all the Riders were united against a seemingly unstoppable enemy in the past. He was turning to call over his shoulder to the others when suddenly the ground trembled underneath. Kamen Rider looked up, to see if the giant Belial was about to attack them, but he also staggered back as the ground split open in front of him.

A huge shape rose out of the opening. After only a few seconds it was clear enough it was another giant humanoid like Kamen Rider Belial. Once they'd climbed out and gotten to their feet, the ground closed itself behind them.

And a feeling of relief surged through Kamen Rider's body like a wave.

The first thing he recognized was the elaborate belt buckle with a crystal ball in the center, with the number XXI shining through it in softly glowing numerals. It was Kamen Rider Tarock's Arc Driver. He remembered the sloping yellow lenses in the mask too.

Engraved on her silver chestplate and the matching shoulder armor with its strange jagged edging, looking almost like craggy coastlines, was "XXI." She had on silver gauntlets with stubby spikes of a dull bronze coming out of the knuckles and wrists. Tall bronze-colored boots with a silver line running from top to toe reached almost all the way up to the thighs of her black undersuit. Her mask contrasted with all the other metal colors by being a bright gold frame around the yellow lenses, the lower part fashioned into a smooth mouthplate. On her forehead extended a round half-arc of metal, and in the middle of it hovered a small image of a round object. Staring hard Kamen Rider thought it looked like the Earth.

"Fighting fate," she said in a booming voice, then held out her hands across her body and a sword with a long, crescent-shaped blade half as tall as she was appeared in each, the World Cleavers. Running the length of the blades was a slim hollow space, and along the edge were a strange multi-colored line of green patches that seemed to pulse and shift slightly if stared at.

"Fate is mine to carry out," Belial retorted. He swung his sword at the giant Tarock and a whip of dark crimson energy trailed in the air behind it. Tarock crossed her own weapons in front of her in an X-shape that cut through the energy whip easily, doing no damage at all to her.

"We'll see," Tarock replied.

Belial said nothing to that, just brandishing the Satan Sabre high. A ray of darkness flowed down from the eclipse, charging the blade, and he stabbed the weapon's tip into the ground. A giant surge of dark power erupted from the ground and shot toward Tarock, who jumped over it easily and came down in a somersault that she unrolled from to slash her dual swords at Belial's chest and digging two giant gashes into his armor.

He spun with the momentum of Tarock's attack, going into a high spinning kick at her head with unnerving ease. The air itself vibrated so hard from the kick connecting the shock wave knocked down all the observers on the ground. Tarock went tumbling from the kick but as she hit the ground she landed on her hands, shaking the ground as her huge body connected and knocking the ones watching the giant duel down again.

She rolled forward and dispersed most of the force of Belial's kick then came out of in to slash him again with both swords in a fearsome arc. Sparks the size of cars flew off where Tarock's blades hit. " **Calamity! Earth Gripper!** " Suddenly dozens of hands formed out of the rock and concrete at Belial's feet and grabbed his legs. " **Calamity! Sky Strangle!** " Tarock crossed her swords and where they met a blast of cloudy air formed and engulfed Belial. The evil Rider clutched at his throat and the glow of his lava-horns seemed to dim as Tarock's attack forced poison smoke down his throat. She slashed him violently across the front, smashing the rock holding his legs.

As he staggered she pressed her attack on the giant villain. " **Dire Fate! Planetary Ring!** " The edges of her swords flashed and she spun as she chased after him, slashing again and again. Seven…eight…nine hits she chained, then jumped and flipped in the air, dragging the World Cleavers across his shoulders, driving him to his knees in pain.

Tarock came after him still, blades almost shining with deadly power waiting for her to unleash it on her stunned enemy. As she was about to unleash a spinning slash on him again he suddenly cried out in anger, " **Demon's Breath!** " The shape of a dragon's head formed out of fire appeared in front of his chest, spewing a blast of flame so bright and powerful even the Kamen Riders watching had to look away or face being blinded. Tarock screamed in pain as the fire covered her entire body and stumbled away. She held onto her weapons with all of her might, and when Belial got to his feet and slashed at her so hard the air around the blade caught fire she whipped around and raised her swords in a block that made the ground crack under Tarock's feet. Belial kept on the pressure, and within seconds the cracks had engulfed entire blocks.

" **Demon Breaker!** " Belial brought up his sword and then slashed down at Tarock and pushed her swords out the way with the strength of his attack. He sent her crashing into the ground with his great slash, a black trail of screaming demonic faces left in the air behind it. Her swords went flying away, one embedding itself point-first in the side of a building, the other falling down a few hundred feet out of reach with a clatter.

"You helped me complete my ultimate weapon, Kamen Rider Tarock," he said in a sneering voice. "Let me repay you with a quick death."

* * *

"I've seen enough," Black said. He jumped down and started running toward the two giants. Kamen Rider jumped down and was about to follow him, and paused for a second as he recognized a few other old comrades appearing from the shadows or breaking away from personal fights with monsters. There was V3, in his unmistakable green suit and red and white mask. There was Stronger, with his green eyes and yellow horn over his red armor...he hadn't charged up yet, but with the desperate attack they were about to make it seemed guaranteed he would any minute now. There was even a Rider in an outfit almost identical to Kamen Rider's own, except for the red gloves and boots. Old dependable Ichimonji, he must've snuck away to join the fight in spite of his injuries. Nothing could keep him down for long, even an order from a _slightly_ more veteran Rider.

Others came. A pair of red and blue blurs that could only be Kabuto and Gatack, moving too fast even for enhanced senses like his to track completely. A Rider in green and purple armor with a design of grapes of all things on the front fired his handgun at a pair of sentoin who tried a hopeless attack on him. Countless others he barely even recognized were right behind them. All of them dedicated warriors, ready to do anything that needed to be done to end this insanity.

As Kamen Rider went to join them, suddenly someone appeared beside him and put a restraining hand on his shoulder. His instincts took over for a second and he was about to attack, but then he realized it was only a dark-haired woman in a green unitard with a yellow sash around the waist.

"Wait," she said. "There's a weak spot in that monster's weapon."

"What makes you so sure?" Kamen Rider demanded.

"Because my sisters and I were collecting the pieces of the blade the same time all those monsters were…and we switched one with a fake. A _fragile_ fake," she replied, and pointed with one long finger at the hilt of the Satan Sabre. There, almost unnoticeable, was a chip that was a slightly lighter red than the rest.

And Kamen Rider could tell what she meant.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She smirked slightly. "You can call me Cat's Eye."

"The art thief?"

But she didn't answer. Already she was slinking back into the shadows between buildings. Kamen Rider didn't try to stop her.

There was a much greater danger to deal with.

* * *

"Die, Rider… **Soul Piercer!** " Belial said and started to bring down the blade of his sword at her heart. Dark tendrils of power reached down from the eclipse above again, coating the blade and seeming to split the tip into three points like a pitchfork.

Then suddenly for a second the dark energy around the weapon flickered. Belial stopped in mid-swing in confusion, then looked up at the sky at the moon, and gasped in horror as he saw the moon start to slide slowly out of the way of the sun. _The eclipse was passing!_

" _Impossible_!" Belial shrieked. "I'm more powerful than ever!"

In the few seconds he was distracted Tarock jumped up and slammed her knee into his chin. Belial recovered quickly and stabbed her on the chest, but there was no special power behind that attack and her new armor managed to absorb the worst of it. She gave him the hardest punch on the jaw she could manage, making a sound like a sonic boom.

While he was dazed she got ready to launch another attack, then stopped. There was weird buzzing sound in her ears, and she realized she could understand it.

" _Hold him for just a few seconds_."

Not totally understanding but grateful for any chance to end this Tarock grabbed Belial's wrists. He growled and shook his hands, bringing the blade dangerously close to her face for a second. But then what sounded like a hundred voice yelling at the same time shook the air.

" **ALL…RIDER…KICK!** "

A stream of what looked almost like buzzing insects came flying at the two of them from what was left of a toppled building. An appropriate analogy, since it was a long column of Kamen Riders performing jump kicks. _The_ Kamen Rider, first of them all, was the one out in front. He crashed through the blade of the Satan Sabre near the base, and incredibly a small chip broke off. Another two Tarock didn't recognize, one with a silver mask, gloves and boots and absurd-looking fringe on the back of his gloves, and the other with no suit on but leathery black skin with red veins and a lizard-like face were next. They crashed into the part Kamen Rider had hit and a long sliver of red metal started to push loose from the blade.

More Riders came, faster and faster with every second, slamming into the piece that was coming less from the rest. Belial growled in anger and what Tarock guessed was a trace of fear. He'd been so close to becoming unstoppable, and it was about to be snatched away from him all over again…

With almost a fifth of the strand of Riders to go, the loose piece of the Satan Saber's blade was finally kicked out by the relentless onslaught of Rider Kicks. The red sliver went flying into the sky and in a second was lost from sight.

* * *

In high orbit, Kamen Rider Fourze wiped the brow of his helmet out of reflex. The rockets on his arms had been on full burn for almost the last twenty minutes, but he was sure he could finally feel through the tow cable he was running behind him that the moon was moving out of the lock of whatever was holding it in place. After another minute there was a sudden jerk on the cable and the Rider almost lost control of himself.

He looked back and let out a sigh of relief: _the moon was moving again!_ It had been tough, but he knew he couldn't let the rest of the Riders down when it mattered—

Just as he was thinking that a huge chunk of red metal came flying up from the Earth and chopped through the tow cable connecting his rockets to the moon. With nothing holding him back and his rockets still at full power, Fourze yelped in surprise as he was suddenly sent spinning crazily into space.

* * *

Time seemed to stand still, and all eyes in the world seemed to be on the blade of the Satan Sabre before it suddenly creaked and fell off. It disintegrated as it feel, pieces of red shrapnel falling all over the street.

"No…NO! I won't be denied!" Belial screamed. Tarock grabbed the World Cleavers and slashed him across both shoulders.

" **Infernal Servants!** " he yelled in dark, frustrated anger. From out of the air between them a swarm of demons appears, only the size of a human each but there were hundreds of them. They started climbing all over Tarock's body and sinking their fiery claws into her armor. She cried out in surprise, but soon it felt like fiery needles were being jabbed into her body.

Belial smashed his fist into her face, crushing the demons clustered there and staggering Tarock. He punched her in the lighter armor on her stomach next, but as he did suddenly a blast of light came from the ground and hit one of the demons and exploding it in a burst of fire. Standing down there was a Kamen Rider in black and magenta armor holding a smoking gun. He replaced something on the front of his buckle, turning his armor silver. He pressed his buckle and another Rider in red and silver armor holding a high-tech rifle appeared next to him. They fired again, picking off more of the demons, and within seconds were joined by shots and beams from numerous other Riders. Maybe none of them had the power to defeat the giant Belial themselves, but they were all united in purpose, and fighting as one any way they could.

A few blasts dug into Tarock's armor, but as more and more demons were shot off her body she hooked a curved blade under Belial's arm and whipped him over her head. As he was in midair she sliced him across the chest and a dozen Riders on the ground aimed their weapons at him before he came down with a gigantic crash.

Tarock jumped high, seeming to turn into a dark speck in the brightening sky. She came back down, blades at her sides. " **Cataclysm! World's End!** "

She went into a somersault, clutching the two World Cleavers in front of her. They glowed with power, and then as she completed a full spin a ring of energy shot out from them and landed around Belial, pinning him to the ground. At the spot where it pressed down on his neck was a giant X.

She spun again and another ring came, landing on top of the first one and another X appearing next to the first one.

Then Tarock positioned herself in a jump kick, a giant I forming on the bottom of her outstretched boot. She hit him like a missile and a column of flame miles high went up. It cleared soon, leaving a charred Tarock kneeling in a blackened pit where Belial had met his demise. But the flames hovered in the sky for a second above her and the rest of the Kamen Riders, and a skull-like face formed within them.

"Evil is not something that can be killed…not even by you, Kamen Riders," a wheezing voice said, then it blew away on a sudden icy wind.

* * *

The World card ejected from Tarock's belt, and everything blurred as she shrank back to normal. And "normal" was something she was glad to be again after the day she'd just had. She had to jump over four cracks taller than she was in the ground to get to the curb, the street was so devastated by the power she and Belial had thrown at each other during their fight.

But despite that people were starting to peek out of doorways and windows, and after a minute those who were hiding them stopped holding their children inside and let the kids run outside and bask in the knowledge that the danger that been swarming over the city had finally passed. And once again, it was thanks to the Kamen Riders.

"Lisa!" someone called out, and Liss looked toward it to spot two people, the weathered-looking older man she knew had to be Kamen Rider, or Hongou Takeshi. To her surprise his face was practically glowing with a wide, victorious smile and he was waving over to her to get her attention. Next to him was another man, wearing a white jacket and pants, that she recognized as Minami Kotaro, or Kamen Rider Black. He wasn't grinning like Hongou was, but there was an unmistakable smile of relief, tired though it seemed, on his face all the same. He'd probably taken the worst abuse of any of them, and she guessed he'd earned the right to be tired.

She jumped a few more broken hunks of ground to get over to them, and as soon as she had Hongou clapped both hands on her shoulders and laughed. "That was amazing! Where did you get that kind of power? We've only ever seen…"

"We've only ever seen one Rider that could do that. We should probably find out where he's been," Kotaro added. "But you defeated the Dai Shuryou. You should be proud of yourself."

"I didn't really do it alone," Liss admitted, surprising herself. She'd accepted becoming a Kamen Rider to prove how strong she could be, it sounded a little weird to admit other people had helped her even after all this time. It was probably a good thing to be able to say it, she decided.

Hongou stepped back and smiled still. "Maybe not, but you did do it."

Liss looked away from him for a second then looked back, and asked, "What did he mean? That last thing he said before he disappeared?"

"I've heard him say that before," Hongou replied, his smile fading. "That as long as people's hearts have room for evil, he can never be destroyed for good. But I say as long as people's hearts have room for good, he can never win either. Today it was us who beat him, next time it might be someone else. But it'll always be _someone_."

"Yeah…," Liss said, looking around at all the demolished buildings and shattered streets from the giant-sized fight she'd had with Kamen Rider Belial. There were relieved people spilling back into the streets and children running up and down playing again, but it reminded Liss a little of the devastated cities of the Sphere. She had a feeling she needed to be getting back soon, as amazing as it had been to fight alongside so many other Riders.

Hongou put in, "We should probably start making sure everyone came through that all right."

"Sure," Liss replied. "But before we do, can I ask a favor, Kotaro?"

"Of course," he answered her.

"Would you mind…if we got our picture taken together?" Liss said, a sheepish grin on her face for her request.

He looked back her in surprise, then nodded with a small smile

* * *

Liss was surprised to be asked by Hongou to head to a school called Amanogawa to help ensure that it was clear of END-Shocker members before heading back. She was a little surprised to see Kisaragi Gentaro and Kadoya Tsukasa waiting for her at the gate. Gentaro was grinning, Tsukasa looked as indifferent as ever, but he was looking through the lens of his camera and snapped a picture of Liss riding up to meet them.

As she stopped and unfastened her helmet though, she noticed the school was practically undamaged despite the war that had engulfed the city. There were no signs of battle and only a couple broken windows, and no students around at all, who'd probably been sent home after everyone was sure they were safe.

"…what's going on?" Liss asked. "They said you guys needed help securing the area. Mopping up what was left of END-Shocker or something."

"They knew you'd just go back to wherever you started from if they didn't say that," Tsukasa replied.

Liss shut her eyes for a second and chuckled faintly. Of course that's why they sent her to meet these two, when there was no work left to do. "Guys, it was cool working with you. It really was. But I'm not done with my own war yet, and I don't think I can really just hang around for too long."

Gentaro grinned again and held out his hand to her, then gripped her gloved hand in a handshake that made her bones creak without waiting for her. "We know, Lisa. Just wanted to have a chance to say goodbye before you did. We're Riders too, we know how it goes." He let go of her hand and put his hands in his pockets. "It was so cool to meet an American Rider…are there a lot of others back there too?"

"No…not really," Liss admitted.

"Well, there should be! Maybe you can help inspire some new ones," Gentaro suggested.

"I've got a few I'm working on," she replied. "I guess. I don't know. I didn't really get into this to head up a group."

Gentaro nodded slowly, like he'd probably thought the same thing about his Rider career at some point. "Being a Rider is all about dealing with surprises, isn't it? You'll do all right. I mean, nobody expected me to end up teaching here!"

"I don't see myself as a teacher," Liss answered. Not at a regular old high school, at least.

"Well I didn't see myself making best friends with an American Kamen Rider today," he replied and gave her a hard handshake again. "But that happened anyway, didn't it? It's all about dealing with surprises, right?"

Tsukasa pulled something out of his pocket next and passed it to Liss after she managed to save her hand from Gentaro. "I didn't have any surprises today," he said flatly. "This isn't the right world for me either." Liss looked down at what he was handing her, and saw a handful of photos. They showed her approaching the building surrounded by police, her fighting those weird turkey-headed monsters on the train, then fighting Paradox out in the desert, and even her facing down Nicolai Maltus. But they'd all turned out horribly, some of them blurred and most overlaid with shots of buildings and people she didn't even recognize.

"How does this tell you what a good world is for you?" Liss asked.

"The pictures come out that way because I don't belong here," Tsukasa answered.

"Where _would_ you belong?"

"In a world that's a good place for me to die," Tsukasa said, casually and without emotion. A little to her surprise Liss gaped at him for a second to hear something so grossly nihilistic coming out of someone else's mouth. "But that's not the kind of world you want to find, is it Liss?"

"Liss?" she asked in surprise at someone finally getting her name right.

But Tsukasa kept on going like he hadn't heard her. "Think carefully about what kind of world you want that to be. You didn't know what it was when you picked up that belt for the first time, I bet, but figure it out. And figure it out soon. If you wait until after the battle's over, you'll have missed your chance to make the biggest mark."

He started walking away toward a door off to the side of the school. "You're going to find that good world to die in?" Liss called after him.

"Yes," Tsukasa said over his shoulder. "Maybe it'll be the world you make. Amaze me, Kamen Rider Tarock." He opened the door and from the other side came the side of a train going by. He slammed it behind him, and the noise disappeared.

* * *

It was after sunrise by the time Liss pulled out of the warp back into her own town. Shift Runner's engine finally gave out after all the abuse it had taken being blown out of Genosurviver, so she walked it to her sister's garage, stowed the bike inside and walked back to Angelo's Dragon Academy.

But when she tried to open the back door it didn't open even with her key; somebody bolted it from the inside. She went around the front but stopped as she looked in through the window that took up the whole front wall. Sitting on the floor of the practice room, talking were Angelo, her teacher, and Virginia, his teenage daughter and one of Liss's biggest fans. Ben Corland, Liss's ex-boyfriend and current assistant Rider. And then Rexia, a friend Liss had made on another world who'd been killed in a riot but given more time to live and power dwarfing Liss's own by an avatar of Death itself. Or so Rexia had explained.

Rexia was the first to stand up and point at Liss out the window. Everyone else turned and looked over their shoulders at her, and Liss guessed there was no point trying to get in without an interrogation first. She opened the door and walked in, and half-expected the group to swarm around her drowning her in questions. But she hadn't really been gone _that_ long, then, had she?

Ben was the first one to speak up. "What happened to Shift Runner, Liss? Don't you always ride here?"  
"It's a long story, and I'll tell you all about. After I'm upstairs and finally get to take my shoes off." Without listening to any of her friends' gentle protests she walked through the practice room, up the stairs to the little apartment where Angelo and his daughter lived, and hung up her duster and put her shoes behind the door with everyone else's. Then she walked into her own back bedroom and set her belt with the Arc Driver down on her little nightstand.

It was a tiny room…if she laid on the edge of the bed and reached out with her feet she could almost touch the other wall. But it was home for Liss.

A few minutes later Ben cautiously peered into the room. "Is everything okay, Liss? Did something happen with the Mythos?"

"No, not with the Mythos. But there was a hell of a lot of fighting where I ended up, yeah," she half-said, half-groaned.

"Fighting?! With who?" Ben gasped, but Liss held up her hand, realized she still had her riding gloves on, and took those off too.

"Fighting with bad guys. Don't worry, it's over. That's why I'm back," Liss explained.

Ben looked back and then walked further into the room before Rexia joined them, a bit more color in her cheeks than what Liss remembered from before. "You done with your mission already, Liss?" she asked.

"You know where I was?"

Rexia shrugged. "I know you were where you needed to be." She leaned over and picked up a card from the pouch on Liss's belt. It had the number XXI on it and "The World" written across the bottom, but the middle where it looked like a picture should've been was completely greyed out.

"What's this from?" Ben asked. "You never hard a card like this."

Liss sighed, but couldn't help thinking on it a little more clearly now with the fight behind her. It had been his decision to sacrifice himself to give her new powers, just like it had been hers to put on her belt the first time. They'd both known what it would mean. For her, it meant that she'd be putting herself into a lot of fights with monstrous enemies and she could easily die. For him, it had meant that she'd be strong enough to help save the world if he gave up his power for her.

It had both been their choice. Maybe in times of crisis, hard ones had to be made.

"It was a present," Liss finally answered. "From an old friend."

* * *

 **Phew, that's finally over! It's been a bit of an odyssey getting this written, but in the end it was an experience I'm kinda glad to have had. Haven't tried to write any official toku characters in a long time, hope I did it all right even if I didn't have room for many people's favorites.**

 **The thing about Liss's first meeting with the crystal creature, the one who came back here and sacrificed himself to give The World card (and whenever I wrote that I kept hearing the henshin call of Zyuohger's sixth ranger) happened in Chapter 23 of Kamen Rider Tarock Re-Dealt, for the curious.**

 **And some quick explanations on who some of the guest stars were. The three Riders who help the team at the beginning of this chapter were, of course, Snipe using Jet Combat mode, Wizard in All Dragon Style, and Kamen Rider Showa created by Kamen Rider Chrome. It's been a while since I got it, but the cameo was approved. If anything's different now, let me know Chrome and I'll take him back out.**

 **The weird underground people were from Kamen Rider J. Being the "earth people," they seemed like a good fit for helping Tarock get a new card based on The World.**

 **The sisters/thieves in the unitards were from the old anime Cat's Eye. It's really easy to find if this made you curious at all, and it's just drowning in 80's silliness.**

 **And I'm sorry but yeah, the fringe on Kamen Rider Super-1's gloves is goofy as all hell.**

 **Hope you enjoyed! Sorry if I didn't spotlight your favorite Riders!**


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